These are the hard times,
the long stretch of coal-shed days,
the corrugated nights of the antinomian.

I retch at the old doubts and the panoply
of dustbins clattering bright,
their watchers simian in the morning ****.

I dress as though dredging up greys,
monotone deep in the GB tradition:
now sandpit tea with oil stain floats
silt dreads the mass of a seven year clay.

Four weeks of shadows drown wind in a storm.

And dreams of my cottage
in days of such calm and late summer happiness
as brought cut corn and strawbs
and horse manure in hugs

until like Zulu tribesmen the birds appeared.
Hunched with expectation
Spears smiling like baddies they rushed me.

I woke pouring sweat like a workhorse
the weakest of defences laid up
my face pulling cellophane over French windows.