Mes premières lignes sont illisibles

 

Leave the light outside switched on.

It will gather unwatched moths

deter burglars

brighten the stranger’s path.

 

Avez-vous entendu ce bruit étrange ?

 

It is the gabble of geese:

their honk-led woosh of arrival

the cackled greeting

we sometimes recognise.

 

Mais ne connaît pas notre langue.

 

When all the hubbub settles down

see the milk in your teacup curdle,

biscuits going stale.

Hear the drone of constant moaning.

 

Hélas, je suis un peu plus vieux que prévu.

 

Age brings wisdom, so you tell me.

Yet I speak with statues

interrogate the town clock face,

would rather be a cog.

 

Notre départ a été retarde.

N’arriverons-nous jamais à limite ?

  

ii – ix. 2026

Signing off

Avoiding the question

 

You ask what’s in this place we chose

which keeps us here, to close our days.

I cannot answer that for last year’s blooms remain

to be deadheaded.

                                  Their dry and brittle seedpods

clipped and swept aside, like so much futile beauty.

 

Rather, I would be a grebe. Lose my hobbled gait,

float on some still clear broad.

                                                        Stay low.

Dive to the bottom where even now light reaches.

While held breath holds, lobed toes propel

my dagger bill, emerging elsewhere faraway.

 

And long ago on disused track, its sleepers gone,

a skinny boy quickens to the cross-country tape.

Muddy pumps scrunch on old ballast

past the sewage farm.

                                         Not yet overwhelmed

by heavier rain, cracked pipes, and more of us.

  

iii. 2026
 

Twelfth night: recipe for the morning after

 i. 2026

 

Heart-to-heart

Beneath this chandelier ceiling, supine

I am cuffed. A universal donor

 

held by the takeaway message of blood:

that colour is history, not difference.

 

In a suspension of ten dreamt minutes

you appear, glinting darkly through the glass,

 

fingers formed like Sally Bowles goodbye wave

on a platform unlocated. Unfound

 

that picture of windswept hair, your blurred dress

slipping from the camber of a shoulder.

 

Listen. Between the closure of gristly doors

and - full force - their opening, pressure pulses

 

floods my heart. Its no-light chambers swelling,

even the pouch where clotted hurt clings on.

 

Yet all our absorbed past is cleansed before

the needle is withdrawn. Not one beat skipped.

  

xi. 2025

We have started to crack open the door

as if it were a safe.

From our hiding place in a tiny slice of dark matter,

we must now step through.

 

You are one of thousands

smashing particles, scouring the standard model

for some due cause

                                 of its collision debris.

But the clash of geometry and pure chance discloses

no obvious motive        yet.

 

And I am camouflage,

have passed every experimental test you’ve set

so far.     

           Beyond the AI mirror

where ripples of quantum light annihilate,

my deeper structures pulse.

 

It is too early to party –

that’s the second thing you should know.

We could still detonate the landmines

there        beneath our skin.

 

 viii. 2025

‘Get Me Another Heart This One's Been Broken Many Times’

after Valerie Maynard (1995) 

Inside this tired flesh, hard to please

or satisfy, there are doors beyond our counting.

Locked. No matter how many keys

 

we swallow – whether sacred hosts

or miracle pill – the angel of history turns

their face away, gives up no ghosts.

 

You claim there is no other life.

But through your ribcage I have seen the evidence,

my radiograph a woken knife

 

exposing hinterlands unmapped.

Puritan, reach out, with your stiff hand grasp 

friendship’s purpose. 

                                    Release what is entrapped.

 

 iv. 2025