THE DREAMER, THE SLEEP
L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit dйfait Yves Bonnefoy Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me In the silent streets, frost on
THE ROAD TO HAWORTH MOOR
for Brenda Williams The dawn cracked with ice, with fire grumbling in the grate, With ire in the homes we had left, but still somehow We made a nook in the crooked corner of
LEEDS
O my beloved city, How many times have I deserted you For the sights and sounds of Babylon? How often and from how far Have I conjured your broad boulevards O Quartier Latin, crowded
AUBADE
Dawn’s my Mr Right, already Cocks have crowed, birds flown from nests, The neon lights of Leeds last night still Sovereign in my sights, limousines and Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled Dates
THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK
Runs to no compass point But starts within the human heart Where travellers in twos may go As for a while it winds beside A man-made road then veers aside We met at a
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE
Desks are straining on all fours, flanks Heaving to hurl the hunched riders Down crack and cranny, buck Finger-snapping lids, consume Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth. The blackboard is cleaning itself behind
SUMMER FEVER
The unsettled trees seem to share My tensions of body and mind: Unable to move before the shell of the wind, Yielding as much as their nature allows, They will break if pushed too
OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY'
To Simon Jenner NO ARMITAGE (I’d like to see his rage) NO DUHIG (one dig long overdue) NO GREENLAW (M & S might sue) NO IMLAH (ditto the TLS) NO CRICHTON SMITH or JAMIE
ON FIRST READING JOHN GOODBY'S 'IRISH POETRY SINCE 1950'
Barbarous insult to Yeats’ memory and Claudel’s Allen, thank God you are dead, you who breathed the air of Apollinaire, Ghost of Reverdy bear witness to the mendacity of his clamour, Hart Crane, rise
OBSTACLES
A thousand visits to the supermarket A thousand acts of sexual intimacy Spread over forty years. Your essence was quite other A smile of absolute connection Repeated a thousand times. Your daily visits to
SCHOOL SMELL
Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles
ENTANGLEMENTS
Why is it that in dreams I have visited – As teacher or pupil – almost every college and school In our once so green and pleasant land? Hardly a subject from art to
LEEDS 2002
What ghosts haunt These streets of perpetual night? Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums For nouveam riche merchant bankers Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton: Hot tubs,
Bridge Over The Aire Book 3
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART 1 The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you? I am the mad
ASYLUM SEEKERS
When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket, Hair blowing in the wind. Could we but