Magical mostly – those first tastes:

Alcohol, tobacco, the long list

Of circumscribed chemicals ingested

Years back. My heart a huge

Rib-buffeting balloon, released

By its change of pace as tongue perused

The seam of gums and teeth for that initial

Fugutive tingle.

Spells, my dad called them: long wands

Of newspaper, kinked at the tip

Like a wizard’s cap. A xylophone plink

From scattered kindling, the scratch

And rush of a match – blue and gold-

Skeined, elongating plumes, their hot

Hearts transparent, licked the rim

Of paper, knitting stick to stick.

Disenchantment, as that quick,

Leaping interconnection of dull

Sticks and squarefaced coalblocks turned

Too soon into a uniform

Orange greed that sank to ash.

My own sure-fire illuminations roar

For more also – grow, once kindled,

Into flames not worth the candle.

Five, I must have been, trailing him

At school through a thicket of print

Down that long afternoon.

No sign in thorned confusion. I raised

My head, Miss said: “You’re not trying”, I returned

To the grey pages – without warning

He roared out at me, a revealed beast

From a trick picture (can you find our friend

Amid the jungle?)I’d both hands full

With clinging to his tail.

We cleared, in one elated leap,

Tracts of desolation – graded

Readers flickered past us

Like coloured milestones – were gone. I glimpsed

Idiotic toytowns, knocked shocked, skiffle-stiff

Policemen toppling; then we were on

To a bigger world, where moon and sun

Came closer, and his purring filled my ears

Always. My skull vaulted island seas.

His tongue was my pillow.

Worlds within words. I grew and learned

To come, as I grew, at his call.

I came ashamed that no

Photo conjured partner taste or place

Like his print on well-thumbed white. He became quite

The ogre, cheapening other worlds

Unfairly with his. I couldn’t speak

To outsiders; woke up locked in a tall

Glass-walled tower. Although I chattered

It was only from cold.

How do you unlearn words, return

Them to innocent shapes? I tried

Staring him dumb and saw,

More and more, his features mirrored back

At mine from the glass, saw then it would take death

Or madness to split us; paced the length

Of my cage, coming to terms with new

Strength and old weaknesses, ventured a look

At worlds beyond walls, decided yes,

And sprang towards the glass.

(1985-1986)

I September

Why open my year with September?

Memory, prompt as the upstretched hand

Of teacher’s favourite, prompts me – school

And all that meant: a sharp, judicial

Break with summer freedoms. Turned

Tutor, I act the child, dismember

Years into terms, watch those initial

Hopes, like the emergent sun

On a maths protractor, cloud and crack:

Kit lost, goals missed and bridges burned

Before they’re even reached; the planned

(See timetable) erasure of Romance

As French and Latin bite the chalkdust, slain

By well-aimed tomes. And once again,

My schooldays never done, I’m going back.

Revolving with fresh resolutions,

I cycle to work beneath the stale

Luxuriance of horsechestnut leaves -

Always the first to turn: a golden,

Inward-crimping rim. I might

Have learned this lesson: crude solutions,

Drink less/ more exercise embolden

A week or so, then leave me stuck

In self-denial, unlike the code

Of the Jack-the-Lad I teach. As night

Bloats, I distort his crimes and trail

Lost sleep. September fails, green maces split

To spill sleek chestnut rumps. As kids we’d prize

The conker-crop – today it lies

Crushed in ignored abundance in the road.

II October

Gulls dazzle round scaffolding; out of the blue

The hottest day of the year

Arrives like a misdirected postcard. Beer-

Glasses nudge on white tabletops; a crew

Of workmen squat the kerb in buff,

Lobster and tan. The month starts well enough.

Then bad news as the skies set grey

As concrete: TOTTENHAM RIOT PC KILLED

The headlines dilate. I shove my way

Through cold to the shops. A banshee whoop

As squadcars pass the pushchair, then a troop

Of men marked POLICE on glossy chestnuts. Thrilled,

My daughter squeals: “Horsies – look!” “Yes yes,” I say.

Dark before seven. Hulking night

Lays siege to our block of flats.  The next

Riot reruns my fantasies. To write

Seems fruitless now. My wife dreams of a ripe,

Emerging horsechestnut, wakes me into sex.

Where Church Street meets High, I overtake a black

Man; enormous in disdain,

Parading through autumn detritus his sign

Of self: a dark coat hooked into the back-

Pocket by Rasta greengoldred;

He trails his blackness, dares the world to tread.

Dark by five. We gird up, descend,

Clocks synchronised, into the narrow, cold

Drain of late autumn. Summer sends

More postcards, each paler than the one

Before it – copied photostats. Its sun

Slouching towards the skyline – like an old

Tramp, October shuffles off to an unmourned end.

III November

Friday November the first. A line of trees

Half-masking each other in perspective: green

On lemon, on rust. As I cycle past, unease

Wheedles – perhaps as the overlap between

Weekend and start of month, a jangling link.

But then, though breaks are hardly ever clean

November and I are always out of sync.

Friday the eighth. To Clerkenwell Court through rain.

Our daughter’s adoption dealt with in the wink

Of an eye, at the judge’s nod. A three-year skein

Of red-tape snapped so effortlessly. Though

A paving-slab feels lifted from my brain,

Angst wriggles underneath. Three days ago,

On Paula’s third birthday, Maggie smiled and said:

“It’s positive; I’m pregnant.” Yes, I know

I should be glad – I am – and yet the dread

Of another miscarriage is born as doubt on doubt

Cartwheels in imagination, like the dead

Leaves that a week of wind is combing out

From the treetops. This is the month I danced to the brink

Of madness, before I made a turnabout

Nine years since. Now, each ravening night I drink

More, sleep less. The same disruptive pace

As then – and then, one morning, winter’s ink-

Back branches letter the ribboned sky, replace

Autumn’s confusion, and my mound of piled

Fears is swept away with the leaves. I trace

A clear network of interconnections, not a wild

Fool’s masquerade of motley, begin to face

Facts: a daughter adopted, a with with child. 

IV December

The Festive rush. Cold iron steps vibrate

In memory: that juddering, long ascent

To the top of the playground slide. No losing face

By a climbdown; though I’d shiver, hesitate

On my perch – till, shoved impatiently, I went

Careening down. December is a place

I revisit every year: a set of keeled

And flaking apparatus, parked on grey

Midwinter tarmac – seesaw, swings, the chute

Clogged with leafscraps sodden as congealed

Cornflakes. A lanky, scissoring midday

Shadow stalks before me, as I scoot

To make the roundabout before it wheels

Faster than I can mount. I slither, sick

With effort, across the web, manhandled by

A clutch of skinny kids. The month unreels

Itself with the blurred horizon as we pick

Up caterwauling speed. December sky

Flickers its permutations – untamed wool

Snagged on a glinting chip of sun; a pall

Of gaberdine; a nursery high tea

Of flaked fish on a blue plate – till the pull

Unclamps my fingers from the wheel; I fall

Giddy, on grit-stung palms and knees, to see

Snow falling from a doughy and impassive

Sky – sinking, rising in perspective, slack

As the third day after Boxing Day. The ride

Done...though the roundabout still turns with massive

Snowlike momentum. Chalklines highlight black

Revolving spokes. I dust myself off, stride

Through playground gates to the blank sheet of New Year. 

V January

I smoke the raw Lakeland air – my red-veined eyes

Mirrored by dawn sky – as we fidget, wait

For the eight-o-five to London (running late)

A family group, rehearsing its goodbyes

In silence behind the chitchat. How I detest

These station partings: farewells flung about

Like luggage, in a zig-zag lurch for places;

The mime and mouthing from parental faces

Beyond the window as our train hauls out;

Then a shuddering, slow deflation into rest

While the scenery picks up speed. The tumbled fort

Of Fells dazzles like a model-railway setting

In plaster-of-paris, then slides behind our backs.

Ahead: a stringy mop of nimbus wetting

The nondescript hills that clog my view to port…

The Romans knew Janus was a two-faced sort:

A politico deploring past mistakes

Whilst glibly pledging radiant tomorrows.

Today it look more like rain. As the train makes tracks

For Monday and work, anticipation borrows

Colour – or lack of it – from the landscape: brakes

Of thornwork, ivy-lagged sycamores, a forlorn

Scarecrow in its watery, wrinkling field,

A stretch of etceteras – till sudden rays

Of sunlight flip my mind’s prism, and I gaze

At winter’s blazon: blue, gold; green revealed

On quickened saplings; collide full-tilt with the corn-

Er called January. Then, though the glimpse is gone

From a window which diagonals of rain

Have started punctuating, I remain:

Turning a corner as the train ploughs on. 

VI February

A rogue month. January days’

Assertions dished by sudden cold, a smack

From a slab-wet mackerel. It plays

This first week like a wild card from the pack

Of fifty-two, does February. I track

My bike through snow: a double line

Of intersecting snakebacks. White on blackness

On white, the parktrees, spiderfine

As a steel engraving. Snow’s design

Stands almost ungraffiti’d. Of Spring’s plan,

Coded in wood and earth, no sign

At all. A fortnight on I scan the scan

Of my wife’s womb – at first see no more than

A snowy blur of grey and white.

Then words flesh out the foetus which began

Existence that October night

Its mother dreamt of growth despite

The withering year. As days expand, a friend

Dies at last, her seven year fight

In cancer’s gripe conducted with a blend

Of nimbleness and courage that transcend

My frequent sneers at what I classed

As her crack-brained attitudes. I can’t attend

Her funeral this biting, last

February day. That she surpassed

Me at seeing patterns, I only know

With hindsight, now the chance has passed

To look her in the face and tell her so. 

VII March

Light on the move; that backbone-barking

Lintel of dusk inching up by small

Minutes each day. The blind end wall

Of a pub, gold-glazed by level sun; a high

Ease, as daylight strolls wider bounds, remarking

Brickwork, paving fissures, intricate trees

Like parsley tops against the deepening sky.

Cries nudge my thoughts, like seagulls mewing

On the wind. I scour the flat, to find

A squirming pair of slime-dark, blind

Kittens that bleat brief lives to extinction, quite

Ignored by their labouring mother. Nothing doing

Her posture says. A third is born and dies.

A fourth and fifth. I doubt they’ll last the night.

Builders invade our flat.. Escaping

To a nearby friend’s, we grin and bare

Our teeth politely, well aware

That houseguests, with all their best intentions, tend

To irk. Snatched visits home show matters shaping

Better, in spite of mess and turmoil, cat,

Bathroom, kitchen and kittens on the mend.

Sky on the boil: a coloured muddle

Jigsawed by trees; a gate banged back

To smash; whiteorangepurple wrack

Of crocuses; resurrected dead leaves, sailed

Through flexing light; clouds scudding in a puddle…

Mutating elements. I think of Jen,

Who died last month when cancer nailed

Her finally – or not? The temple rending -

Then? In our remade home we celebrate,

In silence, Good Friday’s tragicomic ending.

VII April

“Hey, lookathat: a rocket!” sharp-eyed school

Playmates would urge. Invariably I -

An easy kid to kid – gawped up through specs.

My infant thirst for prodigies quenched by

A vacant grey an hoots of: “April Fool!”

Now – plus ça change – we choose to light the last

Coalfire of winter on All Fools Day, just

Before the spring’s postponed, trudge from our first,

Sleet-spattered Hyde Park picnic to a bust

Front door and drawerfuls of belongings cast

About our newly-ordered flat. Just kids

The police say. Those I teach, perhaps, who joke

At simple quarter-truths one had to learn

In earnest. Just a giggle...then I choke

Anger with angst...the world is on the skids.

A fractured view that fits in with each chunk

Of ugly news. F-one-elevens attack

Libya – confuting all those anodyne

Forecasts. Qadhafi’s icon, on a stack

Of papers, fuels my heartbeat. Like some drunk,

See-sawed by an unstable paving stone,

I catch my breath. While others venture weak

Cracks about bombs beneath the muttering beat

Of helicopter blades, I dare not speak

My fear that spring will not so much postpone

Itself as be junked for good. Reproving me,

Pale daffodils blow mute challenge through the rain;

And, deft as a spoofing conjuror, pulling tricks

Off after mock-disaster, once again

Sun kindles green fire from tree to tree to tree.

IX May

It becomes summer I heard the landlord say

In German, that May eight years back

As he bulked by the open door against jet-chalked blue

Noonday sky and the white effervescence of black-

Thorn bloom. Es wird Sommer. A foreign bug

Skimmed, windborne, through the cool still-shadowed pub.

Summer becoming a place, a time of day:

Wind flannelling cheeks as I ride

My bike along deserted afternoons, one free

Hand trailing in lukewarm air; the greentiger glide

Of reflected riverlight on willow leaves

At teatime; bumbling duckling, plump as bees.

News unbecoming summer. I sense decay

Like a rancid mouthwash, a pain

In the liver. I gag over sunwarmed market reeks

Of cod, refried fat, as the hot wind from Ukraine

Shrivels my thoughts to: critical, dustcloud, core,

Meltdown – in an abracadabra of fear.

Summer encompassed by town: an alleyway

Of starved weeds in a waste of brick:

Littered skips, chock-a-block with Saharafuls of dust

And rubble. My temperature rockets; I fall sick

With an unknown virus – delirious, I search

My atlas for those silent deserts which

May soon become all there is of summer. May

Contracts to a handful of dark

Leaves scratching my invalid window. I re-emerge

To a hugeness of green: stroll, quickening, through the park

Not across it. Horsechestnut leaves are splayed

Beneath a pomp of candles. Every day

Fresh openings. Summer come into full array. 

X June

June hangs fire: cloud billowing thick

And damp, like smoke from hedge-cuttings, obscures

The sun. I budge our swollen, stuck

Front door ajar one morning; through the trick-

Trickle of rain on a garden greenly lush

As fresh-washed salad, bid the cat indoors.

No answering mew and leap. She preys

All morning through my thoughts. That afternoon,

Some instinct walks me to her corpse

Humped by the kerb: dulled fur, a slitted gaze

Above a wildcat snarl. We bury her close

By birds she murdered, kittens that so soon

Relinquished life. The new-made past

Interred, I turn indoors again, unearth

Stratified relics in the teetering, vast

Disorder of our junkroom as I prepare

To ready it against the baby’s birth.

Love-letters from my ex-wife, dry

As documents. I marvel at the thin

Charade we made of marriage – soft

And innocently cruel kittens – sigh,

Shrug off ghosts, and post the episode inside

The booming huge communal rubbish bin.

This once, I am inside the skin

That moment provides. Sun, beaconing from clear

Blue, floods into the sharp white box

Of finished room. Paint-streaked, I grin

At kids clowning in the yard, at Maggie, plush

As a ripening peach, July’s fulfilment near.

XI July

The stroke of ten. Huge, pink-white hollyhocks

Nod from the railings of St Pancras’ Parish

Church, as my bus rolls by – the ringing clock’s

Affirmation echoing mine. This ride

So different from – two nights back was it? Garish

Boiled sweet stoplights, ruthless lorries, false

Trails down angling one-way streets. Inside

The hospital, our restless, whispering wait

For the midwife in a cubicle. Re-reading

Posters, taking nothing in. The late

Hour indicated by the clock at odds

With wakefulness. The midwife, gently kneading

Maggie’s overripe belly, thinks the head

Hasn’t engaged. A neutral doctor prods,

Agrees, ordains a drip. A snarl of leads

Hooks her to the machine. When will sensation

Become pain? she jokes. The folding printout reads

Like a crazy sketch of mesas, alps and spires,

Tracing pain that she sings in incantation:

Come, child, come. I talk her through the hours

To a silent plateau. Raucous cockney choirs

Of starlings at dawn...my hot, unspoken fears…

Time is a nonsense. Sudden strangers, yelling

PUSH! A flattened purple head appears

In startling alien profile, and our boy

Is crying his fill. I rock him later, telling

His name over like a charm: John Patrick. Mild

Ageless blue eyes explore my features. Joy

Then -and now, as I hurry to him – wild

Voices inside my head, that match the swelling

Chimes of St Pancras’: Joy, give you joy of your child.

XII August

Eighth month of the year, the dictionary’s bald

Statement. In my schoolboy’s book, a splendid

Unwritten chapter, crowning all those scrawled,

Red-annotated pages. August ended

Eleven drudging months – the only one

Unmarked by education – reconnecting

My self to myth. Stroked mindless by the sun,

I’d chase it over sand-dunes, half-expecting

An end to all skylines, where it hung suspended

Eternally. The flawless, long perspective

Back to childhood is an artist’s trick, deceptive,

As mine was then. August, a circus clown

Of the maladroit type – one whose belt and braces

Won’t keep his checkered bags from falling down

To a trombone fart. How memory effaces

Those holiday letdowns; like the windblown sand

Burying condoms, dropped ice-lollies, broken

Spades and glass. Car breakdowns scotching planned

Outings; last waves through rain; those dismal token

Smiles, plastered by gales to cold-contoured faces

Skulking by windbreaks – though I tried averting

Such shocks by anticipation, they kept hurting.

August: majestic, venerable, sublime -

An ancient head in stone. I sit, contented

By my sleeping son on a village lawn; sense time

Still as a sundial, clearcut as the scented

Blocks of privet. Even the well-kept grass

And gravel throw long shadows in this brazing

Eight o’clock evening light that floats a mass

Of cumulus. An instant without gazing

Back or forward – loss, desire, both circumvented. 

XIII September

Horsechestnuts crushed on the road. My tiny son

So lately born, dies in his pram – like that -

At a Harvest Supper. At home, alone,

I cradle the phone on Maggie’s camouflaged

Message of death; reach hospital to learn

What I know already. We cling together, one

In grief. John’s nodding body, limp

As a newborn’s, cool flesh a bloodless tone

Of ivory. We kiss the pursed mouth, turn

Into a life as horizonless and flat

As an icefield. Despair is a shambling thing

In down-at-heel slippers, in a maze

Of corridors; an idiot lurching beast,

Steered at the elbow by friends from room to room:

Coroner, registrar – scrawling its dumb

Name to a typewriter’s clatter; encountering

Joy’s mirror image at each turn.

The death certificate is signed. Released

From red-tape, we rethread our route in numb

Silence, down echoing antiseptic ways

To autumn’s hanging damp. A pride of slack

Giraffe-necked planetrees, arched in from the walls

Of the hospital courtyard, interweaves

Its variegated canopy above

A fountain-speckled pool that brims the stone

Lip of its basin. Locked in a desert of black

Asphalt mottled with the green

Litter of prematurely scattered leaves;

Discoursing through the motions of its own

Self-contained cycle – it gathers, rises, falls.

Wind noses the tentflap like a great

Blind watchdog. Wife and child

Breathe gently in sleep. I inhale

A last cigarette. My sense of smell,

Though under-used, abused, can still recall

More keenly than the other four. Sharp sap

From camp-trampled grass, the sweet

Insinuating scent of butane, blend

To cheat time, draw other, long-neglected

Absent odours to this site.

Blankets at Scoutcamp; their motherly smell

Of lanolin, twinned with a clinical

Disinfectant reek that evoked cold

Stethoscope on chest, sly games

Of doctor/nurse with girls. When folded

Rightly, blankets showed red L’s -

For love or lust? Coarse, jeering tales

Of what males did together passed

From mouth to ear in the dark; remained,

Despite ashamed desire, only talk.

Hungry for touch, I fed

Instead on other senses; wind-

Blown words of morning prayer, so slight

In the open air; the cloying ooze

Of condensed milk on my tongue; peered

Choking through woodsmoke aroma,

At shadow-rags and flames that chased

My mind through mazes; gorged and stupefied

Self into a state where I was near

Impossible to touch.

And until last night I never made

Love on a hard tent floor, or heard

The love one’s urgent whispers blend

With endless river palaver. Later, soft

Ghostvoices from the years contrived

A dream where I wandered calm; apart

Yet a part of things. Tonight the wind

And rain assail this flimsy home. Let’s hope

The guyropes hold. I nestle, turn

To hug my sleeping wife.

Scraps from the wordless age fall

White from a bleak skyslate, framed

By what must have been pram – huge hands

On the worldrim hoist him,

Bumping through hubbub, steam – doors slam

To reopen on two stockinged legs receding

Along a landing. With such snippets

Precious as old manuscripts, who needs

To know if they are faked?

My dad kept keys

In an oblong, round-cornered

Tobacco tin when I was young:

Flat, dullyellow Yales.

A butterfly wind-up one, tiny gunbarrels

For bureaus and watches,

A rust-roughened, jigsaw-toothed

Giant from someone’s backdoor.

Not ours;

Though I probed all the locks

That I knew of,

They never did yield.

Yet, fingering that metal nest

Gave pleasure – very like the sort

I get these days

From memories, letters,

Words.

I never saw you in your prime,

Skymother. A woman of substance

Then, they say; as dense and lucid

As a split flint. Chief mover

At festivities: a guide

To townless folk moonlighting

Across cat-striped sands.

I glimpsed you late last night

As we drove from a party

Where no-one spoke your name. You’d paled

And lost weight (did iron

Sap your magic?) The car swung

In lane and you dropped like an eggshell behind

The massed cartons and brandnames of town.

Old stories reproduce themselves

Without quite duplicating.

High summer noon:

When a matchflame is invisible

And a toppled cup of coffee infiltrates

Baked roadside earth in seconds,

Leaving only grounds.

When something aloof and massive sounds

To be humming to itself

Below the horizon, and overhead

A few birds preen on glinting strands of wire.

A single puff of wind, which shook

Slender, heavy-headed strands of grass,

Lifted his hair and stirred him to his feet.

He sneered at his folks, reposing

In post-picnic sloth, and took a stroll

Down the deserted road.

From a stile in the hedgerow gap,

He could see, two parched fallow fields away,

A dense copse, hunched in hedgehog silhouette

Against the peerless, taut blue sky.

Dad and Mother said you shouldn’t

Go in woods alone. He stood,

Munched the pros and cons a bit,

And brushed into the thicket. It was cool.

The path wound on for such a small

Wood; and once a scuttling thing

Hid in dead leaves – but no sunless shapes

Swung from the trees. The path gave out

In a sunlit spot, in which he sat and dreamed

For most of an afternoon.

The world was a forest: valleys and hills were sheathed

In an endless switchback stretch

Of sculpted turquoise. There was rich

Variety of life.

It was cold when he woke. A single field

Of barley blew to the rim of sight.

No trees. Some way away, two strangers

Ran towards him, shouting in the wind.

An obelisk stands on a hill

Near Chingford. I discovered this

When I and my small tdaughter

Had some time to kill.

A metal notice, overlaid

With drab official paint, proclaims

That longitude from Greenwich

Once ran through its base

But now has shifted nineteen feet.

I bumped the pushchair to the east,

We wheeled and squinted northwards

Through grey rags of sleet.

Perhaps the silly Toytown name

of Chingford prompted me to say:

“Why don’t we do a journey

Round the world today?”

I saw a road that, from my my sad

Childhood suburb, leapt and spanned

The dirty Mersey, swept into

Another land

Existing only in the mind,

Not elsewhere – like this zero line

Which mostly ghosts its furrow

Through sand, sea and ice.

“We’d make it back for teatime, love.”

My child was not amused. We shoved

Off, down to where her mother

Would be missing us.

The next tread creaks, the clock dictates

in even terms above his head.

The boy has reached the landing, and

ajar, the end-door shows a strip

of sunfaded carpeting, the even

gleam of bedstead rails.

He edges in, untouched

by door or door-jamb; glimpses,

but troubles to ignore

the black oak chest -

Knowing the story

of old; knowing

what sort of box

is better not unlocked.

His own vision of the tale: a huge

stone-furnished, dust-upholstered room,

in which she elects to approach

the single knick-knack

on a marble mantelpiece.

At that moment he

should have walked to the single

small window set high in the wall;

unlatched and swung it out to gaze

on an orchard in May.

But just as she

unlids

the alabaster box, his eye stalks

to the mediaeval print

above that too-made bed.

A chill nativity, where wall-

eyed sneerers, in odd

arthritic attitudes, adore

a mannikin with kaolin-grey skin.

A paper scrap

in the casket reads:

Your lot is this. Then panic leads

her out into a garden by anonymous

headstones, nettles, dandelions

run to seed.

His window would only show

a stonemason’s yard now. He gropes

to the doorway, unwilling to view

what may choose

to take shape in the bed.

Trips, grasping at bannisters all the way down,

to company in the living room.

Who'll give him the smile?

I said the Grandad .

To wise eyes and easy mouth

I’ll add a glad hand

That seems without guile.

Mine the will to endure

And the way to hurt, stated

The Grandmother. Sure-

Cutting tongue, iron spine

Are all mine.

My touch like the sun

On his shoulders, a mesh

To hold others

When older

Said Mother.

The tunnels of mind,

Muttered Father,

My patience

And anger to light them, the rhythm

Of words to delight him.

I'll be the peg, cried self: a

Small but constant something else

Beneath these cloaks you hang on me,

I'll take

The strain until I break.

We none of us sleep well. Small

Dot coughs from her cot; across the hall,

At the last train’s passing, Gran’s glass

Of dentures chatters, eating the heart

Out of her dreams.

In his bunk the boy

Strips thin blankets away, strokes the cool wall.

Your snores increase, to cease as you budge

Me to bed’s edge. We are all

Stuck with unease, a set

Of sweat-basted chickens, turning

In a dark, uncaring kitchen.

What cooks? We can’t detect

Recipe or pattern in the quick

Retreat of footsteps after smashed

Glass against concrete, the seesaw

Of sirens, shrilling whistles, drunken street

Altercations that escalate.

Each in our turn we lie awake

And yearn for a break in the hot, sullen

Animal weather.

It hasn’t come by breakfast. Gran sits

Knitting, unravelling, pecking dry toast.

The boy moons about, Dot squalls

For more, you frown at bills, and I hear

The radio rabbitting stocks, shares

And everyday atrocities.

Has it begun to mimic

My thoughts? I’m no longer sure

Which way the tape unwinds. I’d dream

If I could take the consequences – I wish

I could stand at the window and watch white

Lightening flashes dealing blue

Shadows about the courtyard; blank out as the sky splits

With a racket like a brickbat-crapping ogre;

Wake later, safe

In bed, to see you at the open window,

Holding conversation with the rain.

3.03

The clock ticked, the child, the child turned

to the window game again. Behind

rain-rusting railings, tall, blueshaven

men (unlike his father) passed

the window (men without

moustaches) striding past

the windowframe, they vanished. Rain

twisted the glass beneath his hand;

he gazed

into the basement area where

the rain struck green-smeared flagstones

by a bricked-up doorway;

silver, bouncing rain,

leaching the light out of the afternoon.

3.15

The clock chimed quarter-past,

the child turned

in from the window to observe

the vaunting man astride a rearing horse

atop the clock;

his right hand grasping

space a spear should

have filled.

Two weeping women pled

at his side; all four in ormolu.

The child,

clenching his fist as tightly as

he could,

could still feel space inside.

3.49

The clock, changing

its pace,

raced, the child turned

the roughened-edged pages of a book

of nursery rhymes; grim, gaunt and gaudy

beggars stalked, grotesque and brazen

beneath the pale stare of a someone

high

behind a diamond-pane; “Hark hark!

the dogs do bark,” he read

aloud from memory and then,

realising who had spoken,

added:

“I am three.”

4.00

The clock struck four,

the child knelt down

on the floor and turned

the thick key of his clockwork engine; let

it slide out of his hand along

slick rails, turning, watched it

wind away towards the fading,

painted hills on the far wall, hit

a kink,

returning,

fall, wheels churning noisily,

on its side until

the whirringblueblackshiningspring

ran down.

0.00

All day the clock ran on, at night

it gave out; the child turned

in bed; in dreamtime turned

a roundabout where vaunting beggars

waved from their clockwork steeds

to the figure

of a child who clanged a brazen bell;

who, pellmell, burst his racing train

through the bricked-up mouth of a greensmeared tunnel,

called – dwindling to a fairbluehaven -

to a tall, drawn man (unlike his

father)  behind a veil of rain,

who, with his free hand as the other wrote,

was wave wave waving

goodbye.