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

For Roddy Lumsden 

Fitting that the day should dawn 

in this most Lumsdenesque of Lumsdenesque 

contexts: sea-froth for night music 

and the company of Suzannah – 

kind enough to show me this walk 

she knows without recourse to light. 

When the hour came 

‘Mr Brightside’ played it in 

a song to which 

             by dint of the glint 

                             in Sophie Barnard’s eye 

                                          twelve years ago 

I cannot listen passively. 

Which calls to mind the secret canticle 

that undoes you, Roderick. 

Maybe it is better some things 

retain their mist 

that all of us might carry a well of myth 

in the pit of our pitch, 

maybe it is by such melodies we exist.