two notes echo
still
near the piano
they hover
middle C, B flat
a warm scent
jasmine and almonds
hangs in the air
footsteps
softly retreating
I remember that
whenever I think
of the music room
the passageway
door to the garden
open a crack
the window
looks out to the sea
where the tides
roll out and back
washed over grey
to the distant blue
When happiness eludes us in the dark,
dying in the wane, forsake not the moon
It will wax again, shine its silver light,
the turning tide will ache. Not the moon.
When spring is young and full of love, the sun
brings pleasure, gladdens day, wake not the moon.
The morning chorus brings us new born day.
Birdsong floats above the lake. Not the moon.
It is dawn above the soft horizon
that will our tenderness untimely break. Not the moon.
When Venus orbits high above, my love is in
my arms again, the night, delight, take not the moon!
Good evening
The day of death comes when it comes
that’s the sum and the wonder of it,
it teaches us how we should live.
If I find the wait for departure
too gruelling, or late,
I won’t stand about on that grey platform
in the cold, without a companion,
huddled up in a worn out old coat,
my collar turned up and shivering.
So tiresome!
When all is prepared, right and ready
I will die with delight
on a bright moonlit night,
clear stars filling the sky,
I will hold up my soul
to the moonlight above.
I will tell the world
how much I have loved it,
give thanks, state my intention.
strip off the old coat
and accept the warmth
that comes with the cold
in a garden at night
very old.
The rest will be history
written by others
if written at all
in a never ending story
Morning ~ a rubaiyat
impatient for your arms again i rise
to sit and watch your secret sleeping eyes
what dream is this that keeps you lingering there
with smiling parted lips and tender sighs
what joy in sleep so fills your captured heart
while i wait here alone, to watch apart
and gaze upon your much loved gentle face
more lovely than a work of perfect art
i wander in the garden late at night
to gather perfumed roses, pink and white,
while I my patient lovers vigil keep
to bring your morning wonder and delight
the dark, the stars, the moon are gone away
across your sleepy pillow sunbeams play
in this new world refreshed, renewed, be mine
awaken to another golden day
Girl on the Tube
through hot walls
echoes of balconies,
city of hushed shimmering steps
flying limbs, jumping, crashing,
a horny animal noise in the haze,
imagined necks,
stretched out and glistening,
metallic clatterings, birds in the iron of rails,
misplaced booms and magnolia,
floating bicycles, no air,
impersonal muffled faces,
hearts, feet, sharpness,
meaningless cheap sex hotels,
sweating relief on the stairs
under the river
.
i saw a girl
with the eyes of endless clear days,
a stranger,
the curve of a rose,
she stood, awake
by a door painted blue,
plain and complete
she must be new here
Secret rooms, hidden behind walls,
books, red cushions and a chair,
visited in dreams, well known.
Narrowed passageways and stairs
climb above the twisted chimney stacks.
They rise like curling smoke, a spiral.
Doors that open inward lead out to
the dove cote, fountain, walls of mossy stone,
pathways, apple trees and pears.
At last I leave this house.
Beyond the gate
the island, slate and jagged rocks,
a swaying broken bridge in sighing wind,
a fragile home of glass and salted timber.
High tides beat against it, retreating in a spray.
A window cracks. I am not afraid.
The lighthouse calls out through the fog,
receding echoes that return again,
a sound that swings around the bay.
In dreams, when I am swept away,
the waiting house remains.
Noisy Neighbours
At least three times a week
Thumps, bangs, a loud crash,
Doors slamming, metallic echoes,
Bumps, thuds, sharp edges, smash
I hear shouting, muffled, no words,
His voice booms and beats against the walls.
Hushed stillness after, as i wait to hear him slam out
Clattering feet on the stair to the street
Airless, exhausted relief as they fade.
Everything echoes in empty impersonal corridors
Magnolia walls, polished floors, plain blank doors.
The room behind one containing locked fear and silence.
I sense it there
Hear it breath through the walls
It enters my room, far more than the noise
A pounding, held in fear
So loud that it keeps me awake
As I listen, long after.
Next morning, so aware of silence,
When I hear a sound near my door
I jump, as alert as a hunted animal.
I hear her heart clench
So linked to this stranger by sounds
Though I have never imagined her face
A New York Poem
or What Picasso Did For Me
i was walking around
in the Tate
on the Thames Embankment
London that day
it was hot hot hot
the heat haze
shimmered
above the river
like the sweat
that rose off my back
i saw you
all mixed up
with Picasso’s
misplaced eyes
in Malaga blue
long necks,
curved limbs askew
morning balconies
the sculpture of a goat
made of a basket
horny ram
with a bicycle seat
we weren’t allowed to ride
i kept thinking
of painted naked flesh
Velasquez, Degas, Matisse
and flying to Malaga,
Barcelona, Granada,
Paris, Venice, New York
all the cities we could fuck in
over and over and over
if we ran off
together right then
any cheap hotel room
with a bed
and a shower
would do
we could give up
on looking at art
completely
screaming
meaningless
poems
words
endless
passionate
words
A Souvenir of Shakespeare
In a bay window, at a dark oak table, my grandfather sits after breakfast, in a room that smells faintly of pepper when the sun shines in and warms the white table-cloth. My grandmothers green breasted budgie repeats and repeats good morning as he gazes at himself in a tiny mirror. A laburnum branch taps on the window, glossy dark stem and yellow flowers.
The smell of bacon and egg lingers as my grandfather puts on his glasses and reaches for the newspaper. By his hand sits a heavy glass oval ashtray and under the glass, in the centre, a face gazes out, oval too, bearded, in sepia. The ashtray is always there and never used. Age four or five I ask,
‘Who is that man?’’
‘’That’s Old Will,’’ says my Grand-dad, as if it’s his best mate he rubs shoulders with often.
‘’Who is Old Will?’’ I ask, because I enjoy a story and I like to keep my Grand-dad talking to me.
‘’William Shakespeare, the worlds greatest Bard,’’ says my Grand-dad.
‘’What’s a Bard?’’
‘’He wrote wonderful plays for the theatre and poems and he told about all the things people think and feel and do and why.’’
‘’What did he say?’’ I ask, impressed because that sounded very clever.
‘’Oh, lots of things,’’ says my Grand-dad with a smile.
‘’But what things?’’
‘’All the world’s a stage and we but players on it, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, to sleep perchance to dream, to be or not to be that’s the question.’’
‘’To be or not to be what?’’ I ask, falling into my Grand-dads well laid trap.
‘’Well that’s the question, isn’t it’’ he says with a grin. ‘’Now go out and play and let me read my paper.’’
To be, to not be.
How can we ever not be?
Would we be again?
To be or not to.
Was I not before now then?
What if I wasn’t?
Being, not being?
Do they feel very different?
Could I switch between?
My head starts to hurt.
I think I am glad I am
here, now, being.
I run out to the garden to play.
the magic house
this room is full of funny magic things
birds made of corn, bronze candlesticks, a broom,
bells, painted drums, lamps with hidden genies
a broken mirror up above the fire,
spells, a golden egg and seashells, boxes
with locked lids in hidden corners, darkened
secret nooks, far from the big wide window,
piled dusty books too high to reach and read
not that i could read them anyway, not yet,
but I’m not scared, no fears, I like it here
i poke about and no-one bothers me
i wear jewellery and eastern slippers
they’re red, the toes have points, curling over
i think Aladdin came to visit once
no one in my family denied it
or maybe it was Sinbad, the brave sailor
because i saw an anchor in the garden
by the roses where the blackbird sings
The Dreaming Path 