for Gwendolyn Brooks and Kiah A little girl twirls in the airport, in the line for New York. She looks like five and already cocks out her chest. She is adorned with womanish things, pink plastic bangles and ruffled socks….

Incanting a sound strangely of this world the boats, low in the harbour, said all there was to say about ups and downs. I liked the fact that such a sound is what comes of a little buffeting, and thought…

  I have a secret servant (My rivals knew I must!) A loyal thing, and fervent, A daemon I can trust. He sits upon my shoulder, Has sat there many a year, With age, he grows much bolder, And whispers…

They opened the dikes five times that year to flood the land. Cities were torched, the inhabitants bound and gagged, then forced at lancepoint into the frozen canals. I was executing yet another portrait of the public trustees of an…

  When I grow up I want to have a bad leg. I want to limp down the street I live in without knowing where I am. I want the disease where you put your hand on your hip and…

A seagull stood on my window-ledge today, said nothing, but had a good look inside. That was a cold inspection I can tell you! North winds, icebergs, flash of salt crashed through the glass without a sound. He shifted from…

  ‘Over there in the other country my sister had daughters I’ve seen once in forty years, nor visited my dead. It’s too late now, they’re poor there, and here I’m just an old working man, and the only thing…

  Great-great-great-uncle Francis Eggington came back from the Russian War (it was the kind of war you came back from, if you were lucky: bad, but over). He didn’t come to the front door – the lice and filth were…

  though it might have been chronic around his neck and shoulders filled with thick high weeds the road was lined with stone almost entranced she started ordering quantities of everything down the windows of your station combed and perfectly…

At noon, in the dead centre of a faith, Between Draperstown and Magherafelt, This bitter village shows the flag in a baked absolute September light. Here the Word has withered to a few Parched certainties, and the charred stubble Tightens…

(i.m. Meg Sheffield, 1940-1997) Half the things you did were too scary for me. Skiing? No thanks. Riding? I’ve never learnt. Canoeing? I’d be sure to tip myself out and stagger home, ignominiously wet. It was my son, that time…

We see them on the television-screen, Each shrunk by distance to a manikin, Lined up across the moor. They seem to lean Against the raking wind as they begin Their slow advance; at every pace they pause And plunge into…

  This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird’s foot Worn around the cannibal’s neck. As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is…

A white dot flicked back and forth across the bay window: not A table-tennis ball, but ‘ping-pong’, since this is happening in another era, The extended leaves of the dining table – scratched mahogany veneer – Suggesting many such encounters,…

  Don’t tell me jokes, I know about jokes. They think they are funny. They think they can get away with things. I don’t know everything about them, just enough. I know this: that they refuse to be remembered, slipping…

  In a real city, from a real house, At midnight by the ticking clocks, In winter by the crackling roads: Hearing the noodle-vendor’s flute, Two single fragile falling notes… But what can this small sing-song say, Under the noise…

  The music stops in mid-bar on the PA, So all the customers realise there was music And wonder what comes now. ‘Will Mrs Gurnard Come to the Manager’s ofice, will Mrs Gurnard Come to the Manager’s office. Thank you.’…