Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Never marry an insomniac. You will have

to mind yourself.

Have hem weights

sewn into the lining of your garments,

cure your skin with almond oil until it’s bloated

and the pores are brimming.

Purchase a large wooden-grained

trunk and place it near your bed – it’s for

safekeepings. (Obscurely, somewhere deep inside you

you know all this). Very soon

you won’t be able to tell

the days apart, you’ll develop a tic and it will

distil at the centre (within the hive of your other small

anomalies). You’ll flail

in mild wind and when you speak

minute silver-fish will consort in the pit of your throat.

Exquisite wife to the shade: the exact point you place

your finger-tip on winter mornings,

a raindrop will later stop and fret.

It’s a wonder if you survive at all.

It will all end in the mouth; you’ll blink,

he’ll stir. You’ll practice lying very very still.

Peacock feathers

(your talismans) will blink back in their jars.