poems

The manhunt

-passionate nights and intimate days

-frozen river which ran through his face

-explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw

-sweating, unexploded mine

-then, and only then did I come close

Sonnet 43

-how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

-I love thee freely

-with the breath, depth and height my soul could reach

-smile, tears, of all my life!

-I shall but love thee better after death

A wife in London

-webby fold on fold

-flashed news ; he- has fallen - in the far south land

-postman nears and goes

-his hand whom the worm now knows

-Page full of his hoped returns

Death of a naturalist

-gargled delicately

-best of all was the warm thick slobber

-wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell

-mummy frog; daddy frog

- I sickened turned and ran

-grenade; invasion; obscene threats

Afternoons

-our wedding, lying

-(children) expect to be taken home

-summer is fading

-hollows of afternoons

-setting free their children

-but the lovers are all in school

Dulce et decorum est

-like old beggars

-distant rest began to trudge

-Gas! Gas! Quick boys!

-in all my dreams ; guttering, choking, drowning

-the old lie: (it is sweet and fitting to die for you country (Latin))

Ozymandias

-I met a traveler

-sneer of cold command

-sculptor well those passion read, which yet survive

-the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed

-“my name is Ozymandias…”

-the lone and level sands stretch far away

The Prelude

-like an untried horse

-a time of rapture

-we hissed along the polished ice

-an alien sound of melancholy

-the orange sky of evening died away

The soldier

-if I should die, think only this of me

-some corner of a field , for ever England

-a body of England’s, breathing English air

-bore, shaped, made aware

-English heaven

She walks in beauty

-best of dark and bright

-one Shane the more, one ray the less

-thoughts serenely sweet express

-so soft, so calm yet eloquent

-tells of days goodness spent

Living space

-Nothing is flat or parallel

-Nails clutch at open seams

-leans dangerously close towards the miraculous

-fragile curves of while hung over the dark edge

-as if the were bright, thinn wall of faith

Cozy apologia

-I could pick anything and think of you - this lamp, the still rain…

-one eyes smiling the other firm upon the enemy

-in this post modern age… do-it-now-and-take-no-risk

-sweet with a dark and hollow centre

-we’re content but fall short of the divine

-it’s embarrassing, this happiness

Valentine

-i give you an onion, a moon rapped in brown paper

-here. It will blind you with tears

-I am trying to be truthful

-possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are

-Lethal. It’s sent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife

Hawk roosting

-my eyes closed

-the earth’s face upward for my inspection

-I hold Creation in my foot

- I kill as I please as it is all mine

-the allotment of death

- I am going to keep it this way

Mametz wood

-broken bird’s egg of a skull

-nesting machine guns

-broken mosaic of bones

-mid dance-macabre enjabment in boots that outlasted them

-as if notes they have sung, only now- their absent tongue

To Autumn

-seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness

-who hath not seen thee oft amid thy shore?

-thou watches the last oozings hours by hours

-Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

-small gnats mourn… red-breast whistles… gathering swallows fly south

London

-I wonder through each chartered street… chartered Thames

-in every cry of everyman… in every infant’s cry of fear… in every voice, in every ban

-every blackening Church appalls

-soldier’s sigh runs in blood down palace walls

-Youthful harlot’s curse… new born infant’s tear