Collected Poems, page 32
A soft ounce of your breath ref1
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy ref1
A woman’s skin was a map of the town ref1
Ace in the hole; ten, jack, queen on the baize. ref1
After I learned to transubstantiate ref1
After I no longer speak they break our fingers ref1
After I’ve spoken to you, I walk out to the gate ref1
After the evening prayers at the mosque, ref1
Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar ref1
Again, the endless northern rain between us ref1
All day, slow funerals have ploughed the rain. ref1
All day we leave and arrive at the hive, ref1
All I know is this: ref1
All yours, Injun, twenty-four bucks’ worth of glass beads, ref1
Along the ruined avenues the long gone lie ref1
Although I knew they’d laid him low, ref1
An apple’s soft thump on the grass, somewhen ref1
An upward rush on stairs of air ref1
And when I returned, ref1
At childhood’s end, the houses petered out ref1
At first, I looked along the road ref1
At night I fart a Guinnes smell against the wife ref1
At the end of the pier, an open-air theatre, a crowd ref1
At the turn of the river the language changes, ref1
Away and see an ocean suck at a boiled sun ref1
Away from you, I hold hands with the air, ref1
Balancing me with your hand up my back, listening ref1
Because you are dead, ref1
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then ref1
Beneath the earth a perfect femur glows. I recall ref1
Bless air’s gift of sweetness, honey ref1
Blind black shark swim in me, ref1
But I want to write to an Essex girl, ref1
But one day we woke to disgrace; our house ref1
But what if, in the clammy soil, her limbs ref1
But when we rowed, ref1
By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was small, ref1
Child, stardust, small wonder ref1
Christmas Eve in the trenches of France, ref1
Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory. ref1
Come away into this dark cell and tell ref1
Con artists, barefaced liars, clocks shuffle the hours slowly. ref1
Corner of Thistle Street, two slack shillings jangled ref1
Darlings, I write to you from the moon ref1
Did you know your hands could catch that dark hour ref1
Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Baby Love, Oh Pretty Woman ref1
Do you think they cried, the children ref1
Don’t ask me how, but I’ve fetched up ref1
Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me ref1
Dumb was as good as dead; ref1
Eight children to feed, I worked as a nurse ref1
Even barely enough light to find a mouth, ref1
Fifteen years minimum, banged up inside ref1
First, frost at midnight ref1
First things first – ref1
Firstly, his hands – a woman’s. Softer than mine, ref1
Firstly, I changed my name ref1
Five miles up, the hush and shoosh of ash, ref1
For some time now, at the curve of my mind, ref1
From this day forth to unhold, ref1
Girls, I was dead and down ref1
Give him strength, crouched on one knee in the dark ref1
Give me, you said, on our very first night, ref1
Grief, your gift, unwrapped, ref1
Having been, in my youth, a pirate ref1
He arrives too late to tell him how it will be. ref1
He remembers running to the nets, in early summer, ref1
He was all night sleepless over money. ref1
Her face is a perfect miniature on wide, smooth flesh, ref1
Here are my bees, ref1
How do you earn a life going on ref1
How it makes your face a stone ref1
How they can ruin a day, the funeral cars proceeding ref1
However it is we return to the water’s edge ref1
I am Franz Schubert of Dresden. It was not easy. ref1
I am the authentic language of suffering. My cold, gold eye ref1
I asked him to give me an image for Love, something I could see, ref1
I became a human bee at twelve, ref1
I bought, on a whim, a goldfish for a good girl. ref1
I came on in extra time in ’66, my breasts ref1
I couldn’t see Guinness ref1
I dream through a wordless, familiar place. ref1
I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl ref1
I forget. I have looked at the other faces and found ref1
I found an apple. ref1
I found the words at the back of a drawer, ref1
I had grieved. I had wept for a night and a day ref1
I have turned the newspaper boy into a diver ref1
I hear your voice saying Hello in that guarded way ref1
I heard tell tale of a rare bee, ref1
I lay on the bank at Ballynahinch ref1
I like pouring your tea, lifting ref1
I liked being small. When I’m on my own ref1
I live here now, the place where the pond ref1
I made myself imagine that I didn’t love you, ref1
I might have raised your hand to the sky ref1
I need help, Doc, and bad; I can’t forget ref1
I put this breve down, knowing in my head ref1
I put two yellow peppers in an owl. ref1
I remember peeping in at his skyscraper room ref1
I run my metal comb through the D.A. and pose ref1
I sank like a stone ref1
I saw my father walking in my garden ref1
I say her phrases to myself ref1
I shrank myself ref1
I snipped and stitched my soul ref1
I tend the mobile now ref1
I think I was searching for treasures or stones ref1
I wait for your step. ref1
I wake to a dark hour out of time, go to the window. ref1
I want to call you thou, the sound ref1
I want you and you are not here. I pause ref1
I watch you undress by household candlelight. ref1
I watched love leave, turn, wave, want not to go, ref1
I wear the two, the mobile and the landline phones, ref1
I will be yours, be yours. ref1
I worry about you travelling in those mystical machines. ref1
I write the headlines for a Daily Paper. ref1
Ice in the trees. ref1
I’d done it before ref1
I’d loved them fervently since childhood. ref1
If I was dead, ref1
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin ref1
If she were here ref1
If we were shades ref1
If you think till it hurts ref1
If you were made of stone, ref1
I’ll take your hand, the left, ref1
I’m fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig, ref1
I’m here now where you were. ref1
I’m not the first or the last ref1
I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on ref1
Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years. ref1
In his darkroom he is finally alone ref1
In St Austin’s and Sacré Coeur the accents of ignorance ref1
In that town there was a different time. ref1
In the bar where the living dead drink all day ref1
In the convent, y’all, ref1
In the end, ref1
It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands, ref1
It happened like this. I shall never forget. Da ref1
It was a courtship of postcards ref1
It was a girl in the Third Form, Carolann Clare, ref1
It was about the time of day you mention, yes. ref1
It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun ref1
It was winter. Wilson had just said ref1
It’s snowing! Twelve, she runs outside into the cold. ref1
Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say ref1
Lap dissolve. You make a man speak crap dialogue, ref1
Learn from the winter trees, the way ref1
It was explained to Sir Robert Armstrong that ref1
Living ref1
Lock the door. In the dark journey of our night, ref1
Look, you are beautiful, beloved; ref1
Love is talent, the world love’s metaphor. ref1
Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, ref1
maybe not abscesses, acne, asthma, ref1
Milk bottles. Light through net. No post. Cat, ref1
Minims have one eye, crotchets, breves . . . quavers wink ref1
Most of us worked in the Lancashire vineyards all year and a few freak redheads died. ref1
My beautiful daughter stands by the lake ref1
My poem will be a fantasy about living in a high-rise flat, ref1
Myth’s river – where his mother dipped him, ref1
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress ref1
No, I don’t remember the thing itself. ref1
No folk fled the flood, ref1
No getting up from the bed in this grand hotel ref1
No vows written to wed you, ref1
Nobody hurt you. Nobody turned off the light and argued ref1
Not a red rose or a satin heart ref1
Not close my eyes to the light ref1
Not long ago so far, a lover and I ref1
Not only the dark, ref1
Not so hot as this for a hundred years. ref1
Not there to see midsummer’s midnight rose ref1
Not tonight, I’m dreaming ref1
Now only words in a song, ref1
Now you’ve moved ref1
Obsessed by faithfulness, ref1
old lovers die hard, as in the restaurant ref1
On our Eid day my cousin was sent to ref1
On the other side of the world, ref1
Once, I slept in a bed with these four men who share ref1
One chair to sit in, ref1
One voice for ten dragged this way once ref1
Only art now – our bodies, brushstroke, pigment, motif; ref1
Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause ref1
Out walking in the fields, Eley found a bullet ref1
Over this Common a kestrel treads air ref1
Pain past bearing, poetry’s price, ref1
Pat Hodges kissed you once, although quite shy, ref1
Pity the lovers, ref1
Say milky cocoa we’d say, ref1
Scooping spilt, soft, broken oil ref1
Scratching at the air (There’s nothing there) ref1
Scrooge doornail-dead, his widow, Mrs Scrooge, lived by herself ref1
See the cows placed just so on the green hill. ref1
Seven Sisters in Tottenham, ref1
She asked me to luncheon in fur. Far from ref1
She clings to life by a rosary, ref1
She didn’t shit, she soiled or had a soil ref1
She goes for the sound of the words, the beauty they hold ref1
She made things up: for example, that she was really ref1
She was born from an egg, ref1
She woke up old at last, alone, ref1
She wore gloves, red to the elbow, sipped ref1
Short days. The leaves are falling ref1
Silently on Christmas Eve, ref1
Six hours like this for a few francs. ref1
Small dark hours with a bitter moon buffed by the smudgy clouds ref1
Small Latin and less Greek, all English yours, ref1
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer ref1
Some keep them in shoeboxes away from the light, ref1
Some say it was seven tons of meat in a thick black hide ref1
Someone had looped a rope over a branch ref1
Something is dealing from a deck of cards, ref1
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night ref1
Somewhere someone will always be leaving open ref1
Spring’s pardon comes, a sweetening of the air, ref1
Stop. Along this path, in phrases of light, ref1
Suddenly the rain is hilarious. ref1
Sweetheart, this evening your smell is all around ref1
Teach me, he said ref1
Tell she is well in these arms; ref1
Tell us what these tough words have done to you. ref1
Thank you. Yes please. After you. Don’t mind ref1
That hot September night, we slept in a single bed, ref1
That moment when the soldier’s soul ref1
That Thursday, it seemed they were part of the rain, ref1
That’s him pushing the stone up the hill, the jerk. ref1
The bed we loved in was a spinning world ref1
The cat is itself. ref1
The cathedral bell, tolled, never could tell; ref1
The clock slid back an hour ref1
The country in her heart babbled a language ref1
The crown translates a woman to a Queen ref1
The Devil was one of the men at work. ref1
The diet worked like a dream. No sugar, ref1
The earth’s heart hears hooves ref1
The gourmet tastes the secret dreams of cows ref1
The heart is placid. The wireless makes ref1
The jet of your pupil ref1
The King’s Cook had cooked for the King ref1
The little people in the radio are picking on me ref1
The little sounds I make against your skin ref1
The Long Queen couldn’t die. ref1
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne . . . ref1
The moon is nearer than where death took you ref1
The most unusual thing I ever stole? A snowman. ref1
The News had often made her shout, ref1
The night before, our host had pointed out the Building ref1
The older she gets, ref1
The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered? ref1
The single bed ref1
The snows melt early, ref1
The soundtrack then was a litany – candlewick ref1
The year dwindles and glows ref1
Then, in the writers’ wood, ref1
Then, like a christening gift or wish arriving ref1
Then, like a sudden, easy birth, grace ref1
Then all the dead opened their cold palms ref1
Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song ref1
Then with their hands they would break bread ref1
There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back ref1
There go the twins! geezers would say ref1
There is a male silverback on the calendar. ref1
There is something to be said but I, for one, ref1
There were flowers at the edge of the forest, cupping ref1
These myths going round, these legends, fairytales, ref1
These strange stone birds are smashed ref1
These were his diaries. Through the writing we may find ref1
They cut the cord she was born with ref1
They have not been kind here. Now I must leave, ref1
They have shipped Gulliver up north. ref1
They see me always as a flickering figure ref1
They’re very close to us, the dead; ref1
Things assume your shape; discarded clothes, a damp shroud ref1
Things get away from one. ref1
This is the word tightrope. Now imagine ref1
This morning you are not incurable, not yet, can walk ref1
This shape is a rose, protect it, it’s pure. ref1
Those early mercenaries, it made them ill ref1
Thought of by you all day, I think of you. ref1
Till love exhausts itself, longs ref1
Time was slow snow sieved by the night, ref1
To feed one, she worked from home, ref1
Today I am going to kill something. Anything. ref1
Today we have a poet in the class. ref1
Turnover. Profit. Readies. Cash. Loot. Dough. Income. Stash. ref1
Tutumantu is like hopscotch, Kwani-kwani is like hide-and-seek. ref1
Under the Act, the following things may be ref1
Under the dark warm waters of sleep ref1
Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, ref1
URGENT WHEN WE MEET COMPLETE STRANGERS DEAR STOP ref1
Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words, ref1
Watch me. I start with a low whistle, twist it, ref1
We came from our own country in a red room ref1
We first met when your last breath ref1
We three play poker whilst outside the real world ref1
Wear dark glasses in the rain. ref1
Welcome to my country! We have here Edwina Currie ref1
Welltread was Head and the Head’s face was a fist. Yes, ref1
went out with a silver shilling, willing to buy, bought ref1
What are you doing? ref1
What I have learnt I have learnt from the air, ref1
What if there had been a painter – he was drunk – equal ref1
What she has retained of herself is a hidden grip ref1
What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill? ref1
What was your appeal, Simon Powell? ref1
What you do. Follow the slow tram ref1
What’s an elephant like? I say ref1
When Anon, no one now, ref1
When did your name ref1
When I awoke ref1
When I turn off the light ref1
When I was cat, my mistress tossed me sweetmeats ref1
When I went, wet, wide, white and blue, my name Nile, ref1
When I went to read ref1
When the words have gone away ref1
When they gave you them to shell and you sat ref1
When we love, when we tell ourselves we do, ref1
When you come on Thursday, bring me a letter. We have ref1
When you die in the city where everyone was young, ref1
When you were small, your cupped palms ref1
Where I lived – winter and hard earth. ref1
Where the bee sucks, ref1
Whispers weave webs amongst thighs. I open ref1
who came to lose every tooth in her head; ref1
Who wouldn’t feel favoured, ref1
Who’ll know then, when they walk by the grave ref1
