My talent (or my curse) is getting lost:
my routes are recondite and esoteric.
Perverted turns on every road I crossed
have dogged my feet from Dover up to Berwick.
My move to London only served to show
what fearful feast of foolishness was mine:
I lost my way from Tower Hill to Bow,
and rode the wrong way round the Circle Line.
In nameless London lanes I wandered then
whose tales belied my tattered A to Z,
and even now, in memory again
I plod despairing, Barking in my head,
still losing track of who and where I am,
silent, upon a street in Dagenham.

This is the poem with something to say
that shows you the human condition.
This is the poem both deep and banal,
a triumph of juxtaposition.
This is the poem they'll write on a plaque
to show I was born somewhere near.
This is the poem that folks will recite
whose minds fill with worry or fear,
a poem to take in a book to the park
and ponder for passing the time.
This is the poem that classes recite
for children to learn about rhyme.
This is the poem those children will learn
that sticks evermore in their head.
This is the poem they'll print on a card
for people to buy when I'm dead.
This is the poem that changes mankind,
and teaches the world not to fight.
This is the poem that stands in the place
of one I intended to write.

Oh, many bounds I've beaten well,
And many more I'll drub,
But through this maze I'll take the ways
That lead me to the pub.

Where worries may be left behind,
Where life's despair may fail,
Where peace has smiled on pints of mild
And blessed the winter ale.

Where folk may laugh, where folk may spend
A moment free from fear,
Where smiles may bless a game of chess
Beside two pints of beer.

And in my mind I see the bar,
The beers' familiar names!
The window-seat where old men meet,
Where children play their games!

Where still you'll find a Sunday lunch
On Sunday afternoon,
And God's own pie, denoted by
A number on a spoon.

Oh, many weary miles I've trod,
All filled with life's alarms,
But in my brains it still remains
My local Carlton Arms.

Ah, would I were a German!
I'd trouble my translator
With nouns the size of Hamburg
And leave the verb till later.

And if I were a Welshman
My work would thwart translation
With ninety novel plurals
In strict alliteration.

And would I were Chinese!
I'd throw them off their course
With twelve unusual symbols
All homophones of "horse".

But as it is, I'm English:
And I'm the one in hell
By writing in a language
Impossible to spell.

I knew an undergraduate at college
who spent his days asleep, or drinking beer;
he never needed academic knowledge
until the day of reckoning drew near,
when, as he found his time was growing short,
he’d borrow books, or photocopy them,
and, downing frantic coffee by the quart,
he’d burn the midnight oil, till five a.m.
It puzzles me a little when I find
the ones who press conversion at the end
expecting atheists to change their mind
in panic, like our coffee-drinking friend,
with fingers crossed and hoping for the best
in case this life’s continuously assessed.

If anything should happen to The Hague,
if someday they abandon Amsterdam,
philosophers will take these strange and vague
descriptions, and derive each tree and tram
by mathematical necessity:
should nations shake their fists across the seas
with words of war, it follows there must be
a middle ground, a people loving peace.
And is this scrap alone a netherland?
Not so: we spend our nights beneath the sky,
and every country's low for us, who stand
a thousand miles below the lights on high;
if only I could learn to live as such,
and count myself as kindly as the Dutch.

I heard there was a secret metric foot
that David knew was favoured by the Lord,
and when he penned the psalms he'd often put
this pattern the Almighty best adored
amongst the endless praise and imprecations;
unstressed, plus stressed, suffuses through his pages,
though hidden by the English of translations;
pentameters still echo down the ages.
The spondee's spurned, and has been from the start;
an anapaest's anathema, and grim.
Though trochees may be near the Maker's heart,
you'll never hear a dactyl in a hymn.
There's only one the Lord thinks worth a ****:
the sacred, the unchangeable iamb.