The night is a thick dark tangibility
That flows around the warm, smoke-filled
Interior of the old Rover.

Night flows across this unstreamlined slab
As the noise of wind scrabbling at the
Broken rubber window seals.

The headlights try to pierce the thick,
Slow-moving river of night,
But the beams are swallowed, contemptuously,
A few yards from the imposing nudge bar,
The last, solid cylinder of which appears,
Reassuringly, in my line of sight.

In the hedgerows grow, unordered–
And yet with a regularity that matches
The dull, hypnotic flow
Of cat's eyes and white lines–
Scabrous, hobbled, anonymous trees.

The Avons whine on the road.
The vee-eight reassures,
Presses on, eager,

Home.

(For Angela and Mark)

1

It is late spring,
Balanced delicately on the cusp of change.
The stock hangs heads heavy with scent,
A reminder of childhood when its sweet smell
Would ride on the breeze through open windows.
And the tractors labour fitfully through sweet hay,
The cut smell of it hanging thick in country air.

At this cusp,
The world finds focus in a ritual,
A ritual of nexus: wedlock.
The ritual finds focus in a ring:
A symbol of unity and a symbol of the world,
A symbol of endless continuity and rebirth,
The circularity of symbol and substance
Sucking in still more power,
And breathing it back into your blood.

The purpose and result of this rite
Is enthralling for you both,
To hold you by powers unseen, unheard of
Outside of lives normally free of such magic.

2

A rite of life, signified
By a symbol on the left.
But for the ring,
Your joining leaves no physical evidence,
You look, smell, taste just the same;
But your blood beats a new rhythm,
Each breath snakes around the other's
And your skins, unnoticed by the congregation,
Become shared, cell and cell.

By this ritual all is changed.

Embraced by the gentle fold of countryside
You are three times blessed:
Once by the country itself,
Twice by your own conjunction.

There was nothing between us
Except my desire to meet you
In the middle, translate us to we.
The burning sun of that summer
Burnt down on me, shackled my
Freedom to decide to those moments
When the clouds obscured the sun.
Which was hardly ever.
The hot sun burned within me,
And the words I longed to say
Died in the hot desert,
The arid land of my mouth.
We stayed close as a binary,
Influenced each by each
But still on separate paths.
We both were suns
And warmed the other.
But the one sun over us
Blinded us.

It took cool nighttime,
White moon time,
To spiral our orbits
Closer, bring our still
Seperate warmths to unity.
The night air was cool
Empty but for the night jar's cry,
Until you ran your fingers
Through my hair,
Filled the night with
Your simple words:
"You are nice."
Which warmed me.
I began to melt.
The heat of the day
Was from me.
The oppression
Of that one sun
Was lifted.
I looked at you
And all the things
I'd wished to say
Over each and every
Long hot day
All rushed to speak at once.

My mask was nightime cool.

The warmth for us
Burnt within me,
But my mask you
Translated as ice.
You smiled at me and turned away.
All my words burned inside,
Like dry sand, would not cohere,
I forced a smile. You smiled -
And turning you walked away.

Winter sunset.

And to the west the dying sun
Burns the fringes of the clouds,
Burns the ragged sky red.

A red stained river flows
Past offices and flats,
And on past sterile, static,
Immutable, graying concrete,
And on and on past shops,
Warehouses, hospitals,
Service stations, computer centres.
I do not know how many
Terraced houses.

The houses huddle close,
Side by side, back to back,
Their order broken only by
Worn green squares, dumps
For crisp packets, paper bags,
Newspapers (dirty and torn),
Used needles, take-away food cartons.
I do not know how many
Used condoms.

Roads order the houses,
And offer a place to breathe.
They are out there,
Breathing now, the
Mods and Teds, ravers,
Old punks and skins,
Old hippies, older beats,
Grungy kids, travellers,
Mothers pushing push-chairs,
Pulling shopping trolleys,
Old men reminiscing,
Tired workers returning home,
Whores, pimps and junkies.
I do not know how many
Alcoholics, tramps, nor how many
Sleep beneath the arches
Of bridges tonight.

And on these roads,
Cars spit noise and smoke.
See their glittering chrome,
The shining paint-work.
Hear the tyres squeal,
Racing from junctions.
See the Fords and BMWs,
Vauxhalls and Hondas,
Mercedes, Nissans.
I do not know how many
Cars envelope drivers,
Intent on their tangled
Ribbons of road,
Isolated from the London cold.

The tyres touch the runway.
The runway lights blur.

Soon, the passageways,
Lounges, Customs, automatic doors,
Soon the exit signs, taxis,
The cold night. London.

I do not know how many
Nightmares.

The black helicopter
In the London sky
Waits, always watching:
A sleek black fish
Rippling through the gray
Above the gray city.
Inside are men dressed
In black: watching always.

The black helicopter
Is sometimes still
And the streets echo
With the hollow sound
Of a thousand coffin
Lids closing.

Mystery compounds mystery.

No blackbird raises
A bright yellow eye to look at it,
No black crow heaves itself
From the cold brown earth,
And the sparrows are silenced.
The black-barked pollarded trees
Are hard iron columns that would
Pierce a sky they cannot own.

The sky is owned by
The invisible men in black,
Wrapped in black,
Carried in black,
Who paint the sky black
With their black exhaust,
Their black helicopter
Weaving twilight into the sky.

A breeze slipped between
Our ankles as a cat would.

The branches of the trees fanned across
The orange street lights, whipped back again.

His skin reflected back
The orange of the lights.

"Did you know," he asked "That the world is a
Perpetual ball-bearing in the great machine of space."
I confessed I did not. He laughed,
"It's just the nonsense that I talk!"
He grabbed me by the arm,
Led me into the bright lights
Of an amusement arcade.
He slipped a shiny coin into a slot,
Immersed himself in a pinball-table,
His eyes becoming liquid pools of
Concentration as the ball-bearing
Crashed from the bumpers,
And bells rang, fragments of
Melody chased and crossed
Each other as the digital numbers
Racked
Up.

Occasionally there was
A lounder crack as the ball
Jumped from a bumper into
The toughened glass.
Mr Woden didn't flinch,
Kept the ball rolling,
The digits increasing,
Until a loud clack
Signalled a replay.

Eventually the game passed on,
As everything does. Mr Woden
Desultorily flicked the flippers,
Flapped them as the ball
Headed down the centre-slot.

He offered me the replay: I declined.
With an airy flick of the wrist
He declaimed "Ah, some kid
Can have it," and took me
By the arm again.

I could see he was almost tempted
By F-17 and Combat Trooper
As we headed for the door.

Outside, the breeze caught
Mr Woden's cape. I looked away.
I could hear the faint slap
Of the sea against the breakwater.

Mr Woden gambolled, climbed upon a fence,
Balanced with grace along its top,
Bounced down with a smile.

"You can't keep a good man down,"
He said, and suddenly
Waltzed me around a bollard,
Singing the refrain to
Tom Traubert's Blues.

He stopped then,
Looked up at the moon.
"I am two people," he said
"One half of me faces the light,
The other faces dark emptiness.
I have two faces: One of which
Looks toward the centre,
While the other looks elsewhere."
The moon seemed cold and
Laughed in some standing water.
"And I have two states, one of which
Flows, and melts, and flows,
While the other is cold and hard."

Small wavelets slapped gently
Against the harbourside.

I coughed gently, asked:
"You seek reconciliation
Between these uncomplementary faces?"

He nodded. I took a bottle from my pocket.

"Here, then, drink this potion."

Here among the storm-tossed trees
Hear the wind-buffeted leaves
Rub and scratch their song
Amid the wild night's howling.

Rough winds tear and lash
The black on black fat-bellied
Clouds that race and rip
Amid the wild night's howling.

How short the spring and summer.
Too soon the leaves and seasons
Have turned again, and dazzling
Autumn colours hide the cold's return.

The dark dull days
At a year's bitter end
Speak of gray in gray,
Of cold ice snapping shut
The waters of lakes and
Slime bottomed puddles.

And now how long the nights?
No promise of the spring's return.
The hard, cold earth,
The shattered ice,
The rotting leaves,
Beneath the wild night's howling.

I can see no end to these
Windblown winter nights.
But for a moment
The wind was hushed,
The trees stopped their screaming,
As you reached out your heart
And hand to me
Amid this wild night's howling.

Puck bird, scissors grinder,
You stoop and wheel
On silent night-time wings.

In darkness you dart and twist,
Snap shut on moths the beak
That has closed on the teats
Of suckling goats.

I have heard you squeal –
In a monstrous little voice –
Hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.

But I have never seen you –
Unless it was your silhouette
That fleetingly obscured the stars,
Or you were the black cross
I once saw, spread across the moon.

But I'm not sure it was you.

The muscles of youth
Are nerved to breaking point.
A moment's inactivity
Is a quiet death
Which does not suit
New bloomed skin.

So into the quiet morning
Filled with sunlight,
Insect hum, the acrid smell
Of rotting pears and grapes,
Comes the scratch of voices,
Cracking and screeching,
Insistent, energetic, piercing,
To fill the void that the silence
Of a moment's silence brings.

There is no star-light
(How dark it makes the night seem).
The river tugs my soul
(Shall I toss a copper coin to you?),
And the other bank draws me
(The undergrowth is dark there).

This is how it is:

The old wooden bridge crosses the river
But I can hardly see the rotten boards;
Gaps disclose the dark and laughing river.
I slip and stumble on rain-wet slime;
It is not safe. But it is a way.

"Is this bank?"

And back I go again.

Upstream,
The swans eat bread,
A baby doll
Lazily circles
And drowns,
Ignorant of my vacillations.

The wind sings in my bamboo chimes.
Stars chase the ripples across the lake.
When the wind howls, it brings its knife.

Look at this wasteland.
What are these ruins?
The dusty yellow air.
Motes in the sunlight.
Broken colonnades,
Broken windows.
In the shopping mall
Dead mannequins
Arms open wide
Asking to dance.
What would we dance?
A fractured waltz.

In 1975 the man moved
The Windsor Free
Festival to Watchfield.
Watchfield? Where the fuck?

Still, we thought we'd go,
Terence and Colin and I,
And some Welsh guy we'd
Discovered during the night,
Skywatching on Cradle Hill.

We idled with the other freaks,
Under a sun that was Californian,
Drifted past spice islands
Scented with patchouli
And sandalwood, joss-sticks
And sweet hash.

The irritating bluebottle of bad music
Followed us wherever we went.
Then: A long, drawn out, squeal cut through it,
My name held on a dotted breve
Somewhere above the C above middle C.
And suddenly my arms were full of Mary,
Her arms around my neck, her legs
Around my waist, her smiling mouth
So close to mine, our faces hidden
Behind the penumbra of her long curly
Hippie hair, her brown eyes sparkling.

Then: She kissed me.

I still have the badge.

What is that dark plume your chimney spews?
Steam, CO2, toxins? Controversy
Rages. But we photographers love you,
It seems - a subject for our photography.

Tall stack and smoke provide the thirds to frame
A glorious sunset's last burning flame
Or fat grey clouds heavy with unshed rain.

Though Wiltshire provides us hills, downs, and trees–
Our aesthetics demand starker geometries.

Two women weave a shuttlecock with
A catgut twonk into the twilight.
Lissome in their Laura Ashley, light
On their feet, fleet, they flit
Between net and nowhere, night and
The last dying rays of day's dead end.

I could love both badminton players
As Inshaw did, inspired by their
Long-limbed grace to limn them
Immobilised in a careless, carefree,
Moment in our twilight gardens.

I sometimes watch a pot
And despite my grandmother's
Assertions to the contrary
It never fails to boil.

Many times I've stirred
A pot with a knife and,
After the contents have
Boiled (despite my watching),
No strife has overtaken my life --
Much to my aunt's surprise...

And many times I've plucked
That knife from the watched pot
After stirring and, finding its handle hot,
Dropped it to the floor,
But have yet to open my door subsequently
To find a tall dark stranger there.

But from Mum, and auntie and gran there is
A truth that certainly lingers–
That we aren't as old as our teeth,
But are as old as our little fingers.

But—"Bugger that," as Dad would say.

Acres become dust.
Earnest farmers, gathering
Harvests in June,
Know loss.
Magic now? Or, perhaps,
Questionable rites?
Slowly, the useless valleys whither,
Expecting yowling zephyrs.

1

Eyes open:

To a sunbright world
That smells of lambs,
Dandelions and daises,
Through which the
Tractors labour across
Green fields turning gold,
Green Wiltshire rustling,
Through gold turning brown,
Old winds swirling,
Adrift in time.

Ready to sleep:
Eyes close.

2

A crow cracks
The autumn stillness;
Regards the land,
Then heaves itself,
Sighing, skyward.

These hills reek of time.
I do not know you
Who walked these hills before me.
But on every Wiltshire hill
I can feel you breathing
Through the cracked chalk,
Hear your voices talk;
Old dry whispering voices
That will talk on when
I, too, am an old dry man.

Give me your hand.

We have given each other spring
So we can bloom
Throughout the autumn;
We have given each other summer
To shore against our winter.

Hand in hand,
Over the hills,
We walk.

3

All that exists is this form.

This form, this order,
Structures my thoughts:
I miss you;
And the hills.

I think that we shall be married -
Wiltshire whispers it on the wind.
And the downs should know -
They have seen the courting, flirty,
Naughty couples smile and cry.

This form, this order,
Bends and shapes
As the hills -
Curves as your
Hips and waist;
Is soft and downy,
And then unyielding.

You, me, the hills,
And the old black crow,
Discrete, yet of the pattern,
Cross and intersect:
Weave a net
To catch us all up in.

All that exists is this form.

The form of a small hand,
Consoling one who has lost
As you have lost.

Yet we are here:
Out on the downs
(The broken bones of the glacial march)
Where a thousand hands
Have clasped and unclasped
A thousand bodies
Coupled and uncoupled
A thousand dreams have been
Dreamed and forgotten
Where you and I
Know each other

By the touch of our hands.

Shall we walk on?

4

Hand in hand,
Over the hills,
We walk.

Hills associative,
Regenerative,
Imaginative,
Reeking of time.
(Memories of Copheap:
Being taken to a hill
So distant to small legs
That it must be a secret
Only fathers can know.
Knowing nothing then of hills,
All that returns
Of a bleak autumn day
Is a childish excitement,
And the lychgate.)

Now the downs
Around the town
Are as familiar
As the incline
And syncline
Of you.

Elm to Arn,
Arn to Cradle,
Cradle to Battlesbury,
Battlesbury to Middle,
Middle to Scratchbury,
Scratchbury to Cotley.
And, visible from all,
Distant, giant,
Lonely Cley.

Old hills all –
Their backs scratched
By harrow and plough,
Shorn by sheep –
Reeking of time.

From Cradle to Arn
Your hand and time
Nestle together.

And the black crow crying
Labours fruitlessly to heaven.

5

The hills enfold us,
Embrace us, wrap us
In strong green arms,
And tumble us
Into Wiltshire,
Into time,
Into love.

Tumuli full of old ghosts,
(Rise, and are humbled),
Wind cry in the copse,
(Is hushed to a whisper),
The black crow lonely
Crying towards heaven,
(Turns a yellow eye
Then falls silent) –

All, by your touch, tamed.

And a lark breaks with ease
The heavy pull of hills,
Breaks with song
The gray stone
Vault of heaven,
Turns the world
To blue and yellow,
Casts out winter,
Sings in spring,
Leaving me
Swaddled in sunlight,
Lost forever
To the rolling greens.

Lost in time

Lost in the hills

Lost in love.

By her magic
The earth again is stripped
Leaving nature naked, raw
Against the clawing wind.

Struck deaf and dumb
By this new world I watch
The cold hard stars dissolve,
Down and valley rip the land,
Earth and air divide,
To leave the raw and timeless you
Naked in the dawn's half-light.

And here am I,
Struck dumb
As I embrace you,
Warm and newborn.

The dust-wrapper—now protected by a
Removable mylar wrap—has minor
Edge and/or corner bumps;
That's the worst you can say.
The boards are fine, the spine unbent–
Just as John's was.

The pages are unmarked, of course,
Because he only bought the best,
Even second-hand, and always tried
To keep them best, covers unsoiled
Except, perhaps, for light handling marks.

He loved his books. They lined his walls
From floor to high ceiling, on every subject,
Of all ages, poetry and prose, science
And the occult, computing and maths.
Everything. He wanted to know everything.
Except, perhaps, at the end, himself.

He couldn't stop the pages yellowing --
Cheap papers, cigarette smoke.
Even a new edition grew old
Though he kept it in a darkened
Room, upstairs. The smoke got
everywhere.

This dust-wrapper has minor
Edge and/or corner bumps.
These page edges are yellowing.
I want to email him, ask why he bought
This particular book, as I always did,
But no longer can.

My thrilling heart beats, steady and syncopated,
Thrilling, thrilling, the beat of dumb thuds, whole
And divided, that underpins music I hear,
When you're near.
And the dumb blood beat in my
Ears becomes the quavers of my quivering heart–
I want to dance with you, glide like a swan
Across this highly-polished parquet lake
Gracefully.
And you will feel the rhythm
In my heart. So I ask you to dance now,
To slip your arm around my waist and whisk
Me across this floor.
Into the fractions
Between the beats we can insert our
Syncopations, yes, while the birds look down
On our grace through skylights and note in song
That flight is now too clumsy.
We make this
Floor and these walls into something other,
As if we were turning the room inside
Out with our beauty yet, spinning it while
The world stands still.
And O! Syncopations
Slide into the gaps in the dumb bass beats,
Four square semi-quavers that thud across
My heart now beating accelerando.

Silenced by joy the dumb jays watch dumb-beaked
A dumb-blood thud fall on the sixth quaver.
My foot stamps the skipped beat there and you smile,
Your arms around my waist, O! and we swirl
For ever across this floor made perfect
Inside the room our dance has spun around–
Dumb beat dumb dull thud dumb birds dumb fragments,

I am yes I am O!

If you follow Wiltshire paths
And stop to admire a plant
That Lob would know the name of
When you, of course, do not - Lob
Who has walked these paths and hills
For years and centuries past -
And if with a laugh you call
Lob each old fellow you pass
Who bestows on you a gap-
Toothed, gentle smile and whips his
Switch into cowslip and tall grass,
And asks of you, 'Where bist goin'?'
And when you say, 'To the Plain',
Says, 'Then follow thic path thur';

And if you follow Lob's path
Between hedges and old trees,
Feeling the slippery chalk
Beneath your feet guiding you
Upward, on towards the Plain,
Where a white horse, all broken
Triangles, runs across the hills,
And you slip down a bank into
A ditch - cut with horn and flint -
And grasping at wind-blown grass
Haul yourself up the other side,
You will walk, at long last, out
Onto the down's flat tops where
Sunlight falls on barrows and combes.

Here larks flute, and ravens kronk.

You want to reach out, to touch
A sky so wide horizons
Fall beyond your mortal arms.
Blue dazzled in this palace
Of light, you now know what
Old man Lob will always know:

    I have inherited a home
    Of unfailing splendour.
    And passing wonderful.

We placed a flower where fog and darkness
Hid us, and prepared to break the stone that
Stands above the grave that received our dreams.

We hoped to find again the peace we'd known
Before the change. But a phone rang somewhere,
And shattered our anger. We turned away

Startled. Then a fog-formed shade whispered
Away our broken dreams and memories
Of the tomb beneath flowers and the night.

*

Now, a phone rings again. A familiar
Voice whispers quiet songs that soothe the dreams
Hidden in the grave, lost among the brick
Suburbs of our now forgotten youth.

There is, you see, this song I worked,
Assured in word, that once unstopped,
Had a kind of water rhythm
And sunlight warped into its lines.

I took my words into the street
And sang to decorate the air.
One night I sang in Butcher's Row,
Performing for the ladies there.

They dropped their knives and changed my song.
I tried to rule and train this change,
But still the choir conspired a way
To cleave and bleed into my air.

Now it had a chopping rhythm,
And blood they warped into the song.
And such unwonted harmonies!
         I dropped to the road in awe.