Like The Train's Beat
Like the train’s beat Swift language flutters the lips Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat, The swinging and narrowing sun Lights her eyelashes, shapes Her sharp vivacity of bone. Hair, wild and
Reasons For Attendance
The trumpet’s voice, loud and authoritative, Draws me a moment to the lighted glass To watch the dancers – all under twenty-five – Solemnly on the beat of happiness. – Or so I fancy,
The North Ship
Legend I saw three ships go sailing by, Over the sea, the lifting sea, And the wind rose in the morning sky, And one was rigged for a long journey. The first ship turned
Dublinesque
Down stucco sidestreets, Where light is pewter And afternoon mist Brings lights on in shops Above race-guides and rosaries, A funeral passes. The hearse is ahead, But after there follows A troop of streetwalkers
The Old Fools
What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you keep on pissing yourself,
Essential Beauty
In frames as large as rooms that face all ways And block the ends of streets with giant loaves, Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
When First We Faced, And Touching Showed
When first we faced, and touching showed How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost, The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting owed To other
First Sight
Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold,
Faith Healing
Slowly the women file to where he stands Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair, Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands, Within whose warm spring rain of
Breadfruit
Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are, As bribes to teach them how to execute Sixteen sexual positions on the sand; This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,
A Study Of Reading Habits
When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up to then there’d only been A sort of
Send No Money
Standing under the fobbed Impendent belly of Time Tell me the truth, I said, Teach me the way things go. All the other lads there Were itching to have a bash, But I thought
Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel
Light spreads darkly downwards from the high Clusters of lights over empty chairs That face each other, coloured differently. Through open doors, the dining-room declares A larger loneliness of knives and glass And silence
Home Is So Sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped in the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so,