“Like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man:
one draught above heat makes him a fool;
the second mads him; and a third drowns him.”
— Feste, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare


Pulling into Colbert on a mid-week afternoon,
I stride through drifts of passengers falling
from each carriage.
Inside, they deck the station out
in wait like chess figures. I leave as soon as I arrive.

Blessed with rain again,
pestering the roof tiles, great sweeps
of grey water
dash each street. Across,
a building's squared face, chipped bottle green.
Namelessly familiar,
my hermitage.

I enter half-drowned.
I place myself on mark at the bar,
flanked by fellow veterans. To my left, a lowered head,
the dark hide of a colt
retired early from his race.
Right,
a creased face and suit I dimly recognise.

Before my eyes adjust, I limply
raise my hand —
few fingers outstretched, Christlike. A head bows
in response. He moves
to draw a black slick glass;
a tarred trickle, foam-topped like stormed wave.

The first.
A swash against my lip, my mouth
a vacant cove.
Bitter, it gathers in the pit of my tongue
— my pleasure,
I swallow half in one surge.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

There is a place
in you
that needs a name
but you're an absolute beginner
at naming things.
Centred in this pathos, I've never known

whether to create stillness or bitter passion.
In this, there is a sacrifice,
something to see through to the end.

The openness I sometimes extract
can break me down.
Is it better
to find a way to say it?
Would it be better to hang for it

or to forget
how the fig is fertilised?
In its sweetness,
to forget
the distaste of undermining friendship.
I have stretched myself into the past.

I have stretched my body
to see the places it could end.
Vein bubbles
from where it started,
wet bloodgasps;
sorry smear of a poem

they write your name next to.
History repeats, all that's left;
neutrality at the cost of
a better passion,
and the count of
how many ribs you have and how many you've lost.

I abuse my fingers
and still expect them to carry me through.
There's always a way
to see trauma as something to crawl into.

There is a new roof fitting itself to the sky,
sea-roughened and grey as the vast paving
I dropped teeth on as a child, lightheaded

and living faster. Outside, a steep hill drops sweet
like the dip of a spoon, and in this life I see
my own reflection. It may come from narcissism.

It may come from gut. But its momentum is trapped,
a statue on one foot, it asks to be uprooted. How can I
carve this future into something soft and creaseless?

If I was an artist, I could catch its outstretch—
I would pull the army by the hand, out from the dark
intrusive damp, and ask it to stay.

On the line, a white sheet takes hard gulps of air.
I'm quick to learn its rhythm.
But in the morning it has lost its breath;
in the morning there is a small damp circle
under my cheek.