My mother’s car is parked in the gravel outside the house. A breeze springs from the shore, and blows against this traffic sign standing between the byroad and the main road where somewhere a cricket ticks like a furious clock….

  Majesty, may this arrive, after months of turmoil Carried by vassals chafed by violence yet calm As their tilting little world of wood falls to rise Bearing them like a nation on uneven histories Of current and wave, spume…

I had a dream on good authority That fastened on me like a stitch in skin: Construct a boat, God said, along these lines And spread the plan out on his cloudy knee. So many cubits wide, and here the…

My mother’s touch was not tender. Everything was fortissimo. She made no gentle overtures, slipping with graceful ease on to a polished stool; a cane-bottomed chair held her full weight. Hers were not long, tapering fingers, slightly curved to show…

We’ve had our argument of thirty years interrupted; and I’ve still not said everything. Sitting across from me, at the kitchen table messy with ashtrays and empty bottles, you’d say, at 5 a.m. as I’d rise exhausted, ‘That’s right! Walk out!’ and…

My soon-to-be fourth wife is preparing for our first barbecue, while my third wife is taking out and packing books she’d interwoven with mine in alphabetical order. Why is there always so much confusion? My fourth wife is saying she…

Flat-faced clown of the gazebo, Lever that punctures the world, A see-saw we cleave to and see our fate Rising on the other side. Piano of the shed’s orchestra, A stick fastened to an evil cast-iron cartoon seagull. The opposite…

We were working out our redundancy notices. We talked on the phone all morning, looted the stationery, sat around in the canteen thinking of ways to get rich quick: maybe write a bestseller, maybe window, cleaning – all you needed…

My father had a way with fire: the candle-flame cupped in his hands as if he’d given birth to it. It was a man thing, this familiarity. My mother winced away. He tamed it with a slow stroke of his…

In the pages of the outdated annual she found it, the bird with terracotta wings. Like the little fish beside it, it knew nothing of trouble and its hellish landscape, its weight on the scales like some absurdly growing thing….

(for Martin) Five hundred miles have wiped out the patterns at your finger-ends, the warm pockets of your palms. I can’t picture your hands but I know they are the bass line of a madrigal; springboard that lets me go;…