as stopped as the silence after
a crash, you work through
the snow, the pines serious

and watching, you stumble disjointed,
unhealed. The clockwork slows
and suffers the pain of cold water,

for your eyes are shaded in
the ice-light, blue and unforgiving
as the wind gets harsher

Old is the small of lavender,
washed faces, the dust brown
of waxed furniture, bouquets

of veined hands that hide pearls
in indian boxes, alongside cameras
that fled across years, heavy-eyed ;

then there is you, the way you change,
you are half of these years, not just
the ebb, but a wave never slight.

As fingers stretch into the lesser known
                   slate slides into salt,
                   we are stranded in an half life
                   of stone that rolls down ice.

Mist forces us apart,
                  the rain makes us temporal,
                  the sky is as pale as a bloodless girl
                  forcing our steps to quicken.

The North tells me,
                 this is a leaving on a seagull's flight,
                 steps on an artic bridge,
                 a change of tides, and at last,
                 the rain of ending.

a wind of old nails
             broken stones
the sky a guilt of rain
all these stunted trees
             grasp over wet moss
seagulls are unborn children
that cry over the tundra
this is the end of a measured world
this is the e nd ofa mea sured wor ld

nearing time

a ring of stars told me the future is
the sea that you try to grasp with
your broken hands and the past will
not be changed it is stained with rust
and flotsam as your inside ebbs like
the mossed ruin in the dunes as salted
grass fails to grow as the wind shakes
the waves you are alone and alone

...a sun bounces off my shell
the rained on attempt to hide
the damage the hurter from
inside my back is full of resin
and knots from a black apple
tree all the rivers show a new
face with old teeth and lips
that **** the failed light all
this makes me like a deep sea
diver grubbing in the silt of sudden
waves that soak the drinking loam
of a weakened birth as a sun bounces..

rain drinks my sight and makes my face the sea, i
am falling apart like a wet newspaper, this is not
friendly water landing in tin bucket on an autumn
evening when the lights outside flow too, this is
beyond cleaning and baptism, this might be the
end of the world, and so it should be.

Alone in a crowded room
                she whispers through
                her sharp cat's teeth

*count the rest of your life
in days you do the same things.
Imagine a space in the air
where I will never be

Whirls of wicker and calico,
                 of turf and salt,
                 of cats and fish.

The eyes of those
                 surprised by sudden depths
                 are bitter and open.

They drink sea under the glass
                 of a cracked tide,
                 in green tunnels of waves.

The water children flail under a sea moon.

The sea drags across the dark silt,
                 hear the bell, hear the bells.

You leave, but the snow finds you.
                  Cobbles reflect ice and steps.
                  ( The street is the back of a reptile).

You follow the snow,
                  the windows make you a saint,
                  you are in a church.

You are well-wrapped in cloth,
                  you stride with intent,
                  your heart is an unformed pump.

You are a fireplace, now cold and ashen.

I thought I heard steps in the house, but
it was the black tunnel of my own heartblood,
a flood in old caves,
the lost pulse of nightfall.

Smoke in my eyes.
I am as empty as an old suitcase.

Anywhere. Evening rain.

Snakes cross the road,
                    that is no longer an obvious place,
                    it cracks like old toffee.

Lost souls in nightgowns and slippers,
                    foam behind wire.
                   A dark tide bids

then waits of a gallery of small heads,
blue eyes devoid of doubt.

A world of broken signs

More than a lost night,
                   heavy as old cloth,
                   blind as an uncaged wind,

rather a space where all the stars
                  are lower than down,
                  the moon drifts
                  through arcs of frost.

The high masts along the road
                 are crowned with sodium light,
                 a camp like the edge of a prison,
                 a string of cruel pearls.

This is how I suffer
                 from that which I seek,
                 alone in the changed dark.

A night-train passes, but at a distance.

Looking over the pale fields
and old woods, I recognise
                          this can not be
                          the consequence of birth,

more a late push under winter mud,
as if I am as thin as cardboard,
                          one of no depth,
                          desolate as sleet.

An afternoon of dark flowers.
Werner told me,
                            there were bad men in flight.
Then we sat in a broken circle,
                            as if the air was forbidden
                            with stopped time,
                            the room choked with dust.

Suddenly, lights from a car outside.
Ghosts on a wooden floor,
created by a window and snow.
This is the way you leave the world.

Step aside, slightly,
                    from a beach beside
                    cold moving water.

A sighting in rain,
                    hooked on a line,
                    empty as a fallen bell,
                    an open window, opaque.

If I am distant to myself
                   I am lost, aware
                   of room, the soft crunch of shingle.

Steps of a known stranger, a shell.

The threatening nature of
                             artificial objects,
                             not snow dropping from pines,
                             nor windows shattered with frost

but the flight of keys and bells,
                            and all that begs for
                            subtle asides,
                            all that is malevolent for this,

all that falls,
                     that disobeys my hands,
                     those white apes mapped
                     with the views of the Via Dolorosa

all things that make my dry box spin,

my body does not follow me,
                     I often seem to look
                     over my shoulder

at the dark detective of age.

An index of first growth,
                 bound in curled leaf,
                 a glossary of shadow

over the deep cruched floor
                of cone and splinter, of spruce.
                Coda ; the glass

of silence is often broken.
                lost words seek
                the brown narrative of winter,

the best time
              to read the trees, the text.

As all the pictures
                  speed past;
                  a monochrome classic,

like a flash ***** of stale
                 groups at stage,
                 a round of prospective lookers

as I keyhole in my car, outside
                 this story-telling,
                 all these holes in cloth.

I am aside all this business,
                 all this light snap,
                 the train now lost
                 in the purpose of direction.

The strandcafe
                   was lined
                   with Hitchcock seagulls

as you looked over
                   your glasses
                   with concern
                   and said

that I did not understand Hegel.

A time ago of rage, and joy and rain.

So when the moon
                draws the tide
                you crawl into yourself,

your eyes close like
               a wet umbrella,
               the tension in your face

slacks, the wind cools;
              your breath flows
              steady under the sea;

the stars slip into the dark, the waves

Gather the crowberries for the windfeast.

Adorning our cheeks with ochre
                       we gather together
                       a throne of old rowan.

The staggards behind us ;
                       warm breath at our napes.
                       We are as careful as a circle.

So a keening for the wild flightsman,
                       the hewer of stone, blood-iron hearted,
                       now dead as a distant star
                       that points the way of smoke, of fire.

But for a moment the wind resides.

The wind smells of
frozen milk and carbolic,
this is the edge of December;

a slopping out of leaves
and burnt wood, the overspew
of ovens that keeps

us holding out coats at the throat.
The winter is still out,
we wait for the last bus of snow.

An apple split
by my own thumbs,
a removal man.

You are an ebb
distant, a rustle of waves,
an upflight of birds,
migrant in ice.

When you cross the road
to your car, twenty years
and more fall from me,
this is a closure in dull light.
Winter's tale.

When the night
                 rubs out the horizon
                 and all this black
                 has more the quality of shade

and all the copsed trees
                cluster round sleeping fields
                and buried life waits and looks,

a door in a heap of lived-in-stones opens
               neon turns the cowshed
               into some kind of church.

This is the drained time,
              the false dawn
              that makes the morning man start.

The tyrannic moan of the refuse truck;
the granite of the rook's caw,

the windows suffer under sleet.

The street is lighted yellow ;
for the survivors, the last ones.

Your breath is soft beside me,
each pause fills the darkness.

Dream I am better than I am,
the night's follower, the undecided.

Chinese toothed, slack chinned,
concerned at the inrunning cold
you flood the snowed path with light

like a stage. Your singular silence
incomprehensible for the coated shape
one known, now a smile of wire.

The years, like snow,clean the slate.

When the early mist
rolls down the Inntal
                   and tired rain
                   hits the early window

and speaks in a broken voice,
splashes like tyres on tarmac

your small engine of breath
strectches under trapped linen
                  you are closed
                  and distant.

Late Autumn. Time for frost.

Anklecut but running;
cornchildren at break,
dust and more dust.

Flight the cutting
of a lost sanctuary,
legless with shock

at life turned upside.
Stubble the blunt cut,
the wait of the expectant
loam, under the farrow.

angular,
behind black,
a suggestion of brick;

the spire moon
shadows the roots
under stars,

slight warmth
of sandstone
and ticking birds,

small movements
between gravestones
and curled brass

a dark box
of stone waiting
for the edge of light

( for Seamus Heaney)

as if the pale stones
share the warmth
between two sides
sea and field cut
early light and fallen morning
the path weathered and slow.

Early darkness; as oil we drip
Through the heart's engine,
In black; lemon- faced we
               shadow the next.

We hesitate with tears and
Stutter over earth; arms linked,
              distant and cool

To scare a circle of crows
And a falling steeple; music and
Words that break the shocked ring,
             for that is all.

Flywheels enamel
with heartblood,
aortal ticks hesitate

before the dull bang
of a fallen fist,
the fat knuckle

of the next hit.
Tick tick the
small ones,

the eaters of dust,
stone-eyed they
fall apart like lost time,

the weights that
regulate all
are unbalanced.

A bird has
changed its body,
downgraded to

a requiem of light bones,
a lost map of flight,
a throw of crashed feathers.

Black as old water,
empty as a gutted fish,
still as a prayer,

skinless as the
crashed sky,
eyeless with dismay.

Let me be a casement
that you open when
you look out of a window or
a sill full of warm moss
to rest your hands upon.

Star to let
to a cat-lover
and friend of

less perfect dahlias,
to putter-outers of
unwashed milk bottles,

to curtain shifters
and spectacle sinkers,
to all those gods

of Victoria's terraces
all waiting for
the flat upstairs.

What is left if nothing's left ?
The tap loses teeth-blood,
Each empty cup smiles with malice.

We have fallen over the fence,
Our pictures torn, a history in bags,
We walk like a cluster of wraiths

As dull legs trudge over stones.
The old will wither with frost
When the night comes sooner.

And if the children cry in the night
There is nothing more to say
Than that the stars are hungry too.

At twentythirtyfour
On the eleventhofseptember
     a neuropathological tracer

Jumped from the box,
Lost poem; a title over rain
    men waving tins at a tractor,

And the later sleeping wihout
Rest; rooms full of waves,
    the ineluctable modality of water.