Outside the shops dressed for Christmas, movement everywhere - a confusion of coats, shoes, bags; of “don’t-you-run-away” holding hands, and here-and-there a bustling urgency pushing past gawpers and dawdlers outside the shops.
On the street beneath angels and candles strung overhead, thick traffic moving jerkily through the town by the river in that far-off valley.

The road I’m cycling on is climbing still, its steep inclines forcing from my lungs a harsh, gasping rhythm and filling my legs with aches until flattening out somewhat it brings me to the top, and here I stop, my eyes, in long slow drafts, drinking all they see.
On the moorland beside the road are sheep, tough as the grasses they chew upon and seeming to be set in this landscape as though they were outcrops of rocks left exposed by eons of erosion.
The Solstice sun paints pale greens and patches of dark browns, all spread across the rise and fall of these billowing hills, and way down there, where leafless woods cloak a curving slope, a sudden lake reflects the sky - a gleaming, flawless jewel.

There is another side.

A sun that’s low casts but half of what you see in a certain light; turn around and face that sun to see the world transformed, and so it was when now I gazed and was entranced by what I saw on that high and silent place.
I looked towards a massive shape, its details in that light no more than dimly hinted at; a lump of land dropped from the sky and spreading out like dough, or, if whimsy took my fancy, a giant lying asleep on that dark horizon.
Threadbare clouds half hid the sun whose light, escaping through some holes, shone in pearly beams, and where they fell upon the Earth there was illumination; a pool of colour, and rising from a lonely house, a smear of rising smoke - all else mystery and gloom.

These images imprinted on my mind and, I felt, enriching me, I rode towards the town.
Ahead, a crowd of crows had gathered round some dead thing in the road, their flapping flight as I approached heavy with resentment .
What, I wondered, had they found?

Had I died on that hill, and was I now reborn?

Bird

I too can fly like you, Bird,
I too can soar -
my feet here on the ground,
my body glued to earth.

But Bird, the "I" inside my head
has wings as wide as yours and
when I chose, I too, Bird,
am just as free as you.

Did you see, I wonder, where I put my heart?
Full to overflowing with my love for you?

I carried it so gently across that rocky shore
And all the way I bore it `til I reached your door.

My heart and I climbed mountains,
and watched by beasts of prey,
we stumbled through dark woods,
uncertain of our way.
I wanted you to have it; to keep it just for you.

Your smiling eyes were icy when you turned us away,
And in my confusion I put it down somewhere.

But now I cannot find it - My eyes too filled with tears.

Falling

Falling leaves slip silently through the autumn air from their autumn glories,
And in that graveyard which I passed they'll lie and fade, as do memories of the dead.

On tombs and headstones names are carved which now are long forgotten;
"John" and "Jacob, "May" and Mary" who died so long ago.

Above the graves where lie their bones and who and what they were,
fallen leaves cover the ground - gay today and stirred by breezes but not for very long -Saddened by the winter rains, then they'll be a mourning cloak for those no longer mourned.

Mr Normal

"Look at me" he said.
"I`m proud of what I am
"I'm honest - often - And if I lie, it's only because I have to.
I do it less than some I know who think they're relatively truthful.
I'm not unfaithful to my wife -
Not in any normal sense
When "normal" means
Sleeping with her friends.
There have been times, I do admit, I've been obliged to oblige
A friendly "bit of skirt" -
But always most discreetly, mind,
And with the understanding it's Strictly "entre nous" - with absolutely
No strings attached - is that understood?
I haven't stolen anything since I was a kid,
OK. Yes. When my house was broken into, I did inflate the losses;
Everyone does the same - I mean - you beat the system if you can,
Or the system will beat you.
It's what you learn at school.

"Look at me" he said. "Do I look abnormal?"

Autumn sun

That sun lying low behind the trees
And making two-dimensional monsters
Stretch across the grass of the grazing sheep;
That sun so fiercely bright I can but glance at it,
And am blinded to all the world around me when I do,
Is playing make belief - A lion that roars to cower the realm
It's now too old to rule, and soon must die -
That sun is slowly slipping into winter's wane;
He's in the evening of his year,
And lays Autumnal wistfulness
On meadows, hills and hedgerows -
A gentle touch that strokes
The colours towards their winter sleep.

So my dear, toss the coin and pray its heads you win.

Playing Brag or Vingt-et-un?
Cross your fingers and just may
be you'll get the cards you want.
Oh yes, my dear, Fate will deal a winning hand - if it's on your side.
So study hard what it wants and how you can provide it.
Ensure you never tempt it, though, nor ever disregard it.
Observe, my dear, the many rules Fate lays down and wants obeyed before you get its blessing.

The storm waves came across the sea, whipped to foam by the wind, and dark with frenzied fury. We would be drowned, our boat capsized or smashed against the rocks, and shouting loud, "Good Lord!" we prayed, "save us! Save us! Save us!"

The child lay dying by the road, and gathered all around, her brothers, sisters, mum and dad and passing sympathisers. How could, some asked, so terrible a thing have happened at that hour when the world had seemed so measured and so normal?

I went with a rifle into the garden, and seeing an apple at some distance swelling on a branch, for amusement shot at it, and unwittingly sent a speeding bullet to make a deadly assignation with a hare, lurking unseen by me, beyond the hedge and in the ditch, its sudden scream quite startling me.

How far into our pasts stretched the paths that brought us both to this sad coincidence?
Was it always to be, since time begun, our fates to meet that day?

And what of the child dying by the road and the driver whose car had struck her?

What of the storm? What of the waves that swamped the boat and sent it to the bottom?

Did Fate deal the cards we hold in our hands minutes or hours or eons before we get to play them?

Is it ever on our side? Does it even care?

You sent me hurtling to the ground,
and here I lie, quite broken.

Your words, flung so quickly off your teeth were spears with poisoned tips.
Your eyes had no remorse when they saw me fall
and everything inside me
die.

Falling leaves released from life
tumble through the air,
and they had been so beautiful in their dying hours.
Gorgeous ornaments displaying in the sun,
showing off their colours, dressing up the hillsides for a gala show;
a set designers' whim beyond price to stage;
a super panorama for summer's final fling.
Then came the end, so suddenly;
a curtain falling to the ground and
now we see a darkened world -
bones of trees and cold winds blow and
death is under foot.

The leaves, heaped high,
will turn to slime and fill the air with their decay.

I, like them, have my hour.
I would that they had never fallen;
that what they hid I never saw.

Her face shiny from plastic surgery,
the rich, old, taught-skinned woman from Florida
on a luxury cruise to the Arctic Circle
saw the midnight sun and said:
"Is that the same sun we have in Florida?"
Yes, lady. The very same.

The same sun that shines on you
and your car and your pool
and your lawn which the man
who frightens you a bit because he's poor, and black
and might one day rape you,
cuts to within half an inch its life
every week.
The same sun that shines
on the child who lives in a shack
on empty, fly-blown land
on which misery grows
outside Harare, and his
father's dead of AIDS and his
mother's dying too, and
he never has clean water to drink, and
his body's covered in sores.

The same sun, Ma'am, that shines
on Darfur's daily dying, and
the pain and poverty and deprivation
which those mascara eyes
poking out from
expensive rejuvinating face creams never see,
because they never want to.

And inside the head behind them,
ignorance feasts and swells with fat.

Thesis:
I don't insist I hold your hand
or that I walk with you.
I don't insist I sometimes kiss
you softly on your cheek.
I don't insist on wishing you
were here by my side
or that, when looking up,
I should see you there.
All I do insist, my love,
is that you let me care.

Antithesis

That smile has ice in its eyes,
and the teeth, so white
ooze blood.
There's a fist in her head
that will pull out your heart
and her breasts
will stomp it to death.
Beware the treacle
spilling off her tongue,
beware her beguiling words.
She wants your money,
your house, your cars,
She'll get them now
if not then,
and when
they're hers, she'll
open that mouth
and she'll spit you out,
like a husk.

There had been blood in Croke Park
Irish blood wrung out
by the muscle of machine gun fire
in vengeance for English blood
shed in a quarrel as old as history;
the Irish and the English
at each other's throats
- father, son and holy ghost.
Each steeped in
certainty of being in the right.

There was blood
on the turf and blood
in the stands
and hate in a people's heart.
So where is it now?
Where did it go?
The echo of those guns
can never now survive
the welcome in Croke Park
for an English sporting side.

Move stealthily about the house
baby's trying to sleep.
Move stealthily about the house
whisper when you speak
Move stealthily about the house
don't make that floarboard creak.
Move stealthily about the house,
baby's trying to sleep.

Move stealthily about the house,
grandad's lying in there
Move stealthily about the house
step quietly on the stair.
Move stealthily about the house,
we don't want him to hear.
Move stealthily about the house,
Grandad's dying in there.

On Wings

So my dear, toss the coin and pray its heads you win.

Playing Brag or Vingt-et-un?
Cross your fingers and just maybe you'll get the cards you want.
Oh yes, my dear, Fate will deal a winning hand - if it's on your side.
So study hard what it wants and how you can provide it.
Ensure you never tempt it, though, nor ever disregard it.
Observe, my dear, the many rules Fate lays down and wants obeyed
before you get its blessing.

The storm waves came across the sea,
whipped to foam by the wind, and dark with frenzied fury.
We would be drowned, our boat capsized or smashed against the rocks,
and shouting loud, "Good Lord!" we prayed, "save us! Save us! Save us!"

The child lay dying by the road,
and gathered all around, her brothers, sisters,
mum and dad and passing sympathisers.
How could, some asked, so terrible a thing have happened at that hour
when the world had seemed so measured and so normal?

I went with a rifle into the garden,
and seeing an apple at some distance swelling on a branch,
for amusement shot at it,
and unwittingly sent a speeding bullet
to make a deadly assignation with a hare,
lurking unseen by me,
beyond the hedge and in the ditch,
its sudden scream quite startling me.

How far into our pasts stretched the paths that brought us both to this sad coincidence?
Was it always to be, since time begun, our fates to meet that day?

And what of the child dying by the road and the driver whose car had struck her?

What of the storm? What of the waves that swamped the boat and sent it to the bottom?

Did Fate deal the cards we hold in our hands
minutes or hours or eons before we get to play them?

Is it ever on our side? Does it even care?

You sent me hurtling to the ground,
and here I lie,
quite broken.

Your words,
flung so quickly
off your teeth,
were spears with poisoned tips.

Your eyes had no remorse
when they saw me fall
and
everything inside me die.

My life
tick
slides through time
tock
and time
tick
trickles past
tock
as fast
tick
as the hands
tock
go round the face
tick
of the clock
tock
and with every
tick
and with every
tock
my life
tick
melts away
tock
as it did
tick
for all those
tock
who now
tick
are no more
tock
tick...tock...tick...tock.

I was followed home tonight,
so when I got in
I locked the door
and ran through all the house
locking all the windows too.

But it came in through the walls -
and no one heard me scream

When you left the house
and heard an ambulance wail,
what would you have done
if you had known it wailed for you?

Oh yes: I know that
all my life,
from out of the future
an ambulance
has been coming for me.

Its driver has the map;
his schedule's well defined.
He knows the time,
he knows the place
we'll meet on my road through life.

As for me, I stagger on,
unknowing and quite blind.

I asked the Rock
as old as the Earth
where the stars
had gone.

It said that they
were dead,
and how I wept
at that!

I climbed the Rock
as old as the Earth
and on to the wind
I threw my life,
to be carried away
to eternal night.

Water my grief, my tears.
Flood my broken heart.
I saw Death come to to kiss you;
creeping through the dark.
I held you, dear, so tightly;
I wanted you to stay,
but Death had come
to take you.
He said we had to part.

Water my grief my tears,
and drown my broken heart.

Move stealthily about the house
baby's trying to sleep.
Move stealthily about the house
whisper when you speak
Move stealthily about the house
don't make that floarboard creak.
Move stealthily about the house,
baby's trying to sleep.

Move stealthily about the house,
grandad's lying in there
Move stealthily about the house
step quietly on the stair.
Move stealthily about the house,
we don't want him to hear.
Move stealthily about the house,
Grandad's dying in there.

I sit in the barber's chair,
staring into the mirror behind the sink -
on the pictured wall, beautifully-tonsored
models trapped above the hair gels looking cool for ever more -
and on the barber's face an expression of close
concentration, snipping here and snipping there,
as he has snipped a thousand times before
while a ready-programmed conversation
spills from his brain, through his mouth and
into his customer's ear.

I look into the mirror at the man in the barber's chair.
I know the face. it's always there, staring
dispassionately back.
But is that me behind those eyes?
And if the face were
different, would I be different too?

Are we our faces? Is that all?
The hair falls off the barbers's scissors in clumps to the floor.
Bits of me mingled there with bits of other people;
minutes of their lives.
Anger, smiles, going to work, coffee breaks,
"Yea. I'm OK thanks. And you?"
All those interactions;
all those feelings welling up and falling back
like waves against a wall;
decisions; and indecisions.

There's a month of me under the barber's feet.
And now the barber's boy has come to sweep it all away.
Neatly, the story of my life is dumped into a bin.

There's a sharp wind blowing,
cracking the sea and
smashing it on the shore
and riding through the ruins
are the kite surfers pulled by nets
that catch the wind,
bending from its weight;
but it always slips away
so when the fishing's finished
the empty nets collapse,
and have nothing now to show
for all the work they did
or all the wind they caught.
All that's left are memories
stuck in the folded fabric
with grains of sand and salt.

Hurry little boy
down the garden path
Hurry little darling,
through your childhood years.
The love that
attends you
would keep you safe
from harns,
and it would
keep you
tight within
its arms.
But hurry little boy
down that garden path.
Hurry little darling
through your childhhood years.
Your manhood
is awaiting
and we must let you go.
But oh our little darling,
it's sad to see you go.
So sad that just the
thought of it
bathes my cheeks in tears.

When the sun and moon hold hands;
When the stars sing in unison
and the winds bless the sky.
When all my tears are dry, my love,
I know we'll never die.

These things will never be.
Our tears will flow, I know.
Alone you or I, my love,
will live when one will die.

And then the flowers can all die too,
and the sun and moon.
The stars can freeze
and in the sky
the wind will cry
shards of broken glass.

Don't hold my hand,
don't touch me,
don't breath so
I can hear.

And

hide your mouth,
hide your cheek,
hide your neck and ear.
Don't make my heart beat
wildly by being quite so near.

And

Don't part your lips
or close your eyes,
don't smile,
don't sigh,
don't rustle.

Your glance blows my strength away,
your smile dissolves my heart.
Your power is too great for me -
and yet you do not know it.

I saw your coat
on the back of a chair
and for a moment
I was glad you'd come.
Then I remembered
the night before
when you'd misconstrued
a remark.
We'd almost been close
enough to touch
our minds in
close proximity.
But a chasm had yawned
and now when I
saw the back of your head,
I tensed.
You turned slightly
and in your eye
was a wall eight foot high
and topped with broken glass.

"The clouds" I said. "Look at the clouds"
and held him up so he could see,
but how was he to know what out there
I meant by "clouds"; how could I have explained?

One day he'll know.
One day, no doubt, he'll learn as I have done,
but holding him and pointing up I had no thought of that,
and now I wish he'll never know how clouds
can hide the sun.

I found a tear on the ground
which had fallen from your eye
Then I saw, looking closer,
your tears were all around
I'd seen you smile and heard you laugh -
the sound of sunlight, so I thought;
and flowers in the spring.

So why, where you've passed by did
tears fall
from your eyes?

What made the sunlight turn to night;
what made the flowers die?

In filth and rags I lay at your feet,
crippled by fears, blinded by dreads,
while spikes of ice pierced my chest.
and all the joys I'd ever felt
ran out upon the ground.
Warm they'd been and now were
cold,
blasted by despair.

I felt your hand upon my arm;
and though I'm weak and wretched still,
in filth and rags I lie,
I sense a sunrise on my life,
and love enfolding me.

It is a world of foaming tumult out there on the shouting chaos of the sea.
Are the waves tormented by the gale which blasts the flattened cliff-top shrubs and tries to lift me off my feet; or are the wind and waves in dangerous, wild revolt - Bonny and Clyde holding up cross-Channel ferries and battering everything in their way?
Sheltered, we stood and watched, enthralled spectators of the violent elements raging at the land with fists and feet, while scurrying clouds bore jagged teeth and spat at us below.
It would be death, I would have thought, inside the jaws of that ferocious storm, yet lying on the tumbling air were gulls with arms outstretched, casually proceeding against all odds towards their destinations.

I looked into the pool, and the way the wind broke up its surface, the reflection of the sky was fractured into a mass of tiny silver bells silently shining their song of light back into the world.
With my hand I scooped to catch them up and see them laugh, but they sank at once
and now all I ever see
is the grey, unsmiling day.

Falling

Night set free the dreams
Trapped behind his eyes
That only glimpsed the light
When he lay asleep.

They are on wings,
Wide as eagle's,A
nd high among the crags they soar
Through golden clouds of make belief -
thorns and stones
And wilderness
In darkness far beneath.

“Look at me” he said. “I‘m proud of what I am”
I’m honest - most of the time,
And if I lie, it’s only because I have to.
I do it less than some I know
who think they’re relatively truthful.
I’m not unfaithful to my wife -
Not in any normal sense
When “normal” means
Sleeping with her friends.
There have been times,
I do admit,
I’ve been obliged to oblige
A friendly “bit of skirt” -
But always most discreetly, mind,
And with the understanding it’s
Strictly “entre nous” - with absolutely
No strings attached - is that understood?
I haven’t stolen anything since I was a kid,
OK. Yes. When my house was broken into,
I did inflated the losses;
Everyone does the same -
I mean - you beat the system if you can,
Or the system will beat you.
It’s what you learn at school.
“Look at me” he said. “Do I look abnormal?

That sun lying low behind the trees
And making two-dimensional monsters
Stretch across the grass of the grazing sheep;
That sun so fiercely bright I can but glance at it,
And am blinded to all the world around when I do,
Is playing make belief -
A lion that roars to cower the realm
It’s now too old to rule, and soon must die -
That sun is slowly slipping into winter’s wane;
He’s in the evening of his year,
And lays Autumnal wistfulness
On meadows, hills and hedgerows -
A gentle touch that strokes
The colours towards their winter sleep.

Will We Remember Them?

Is it possible to do sufficient honour to the young men whose blood stained the desolate battle fields churned by the violence of World War One?
Is it possible to imagine how it was to be flung by the arms of your homeland into the inexorable advance of that roaring machine of death?
Is it possible to imagine the deprivations of life at the Front?
Is it possible to imagine how men, with hopes of an orderly life chipped smaller with every passing day and every comrade`s death, could smile and joke and laugh, and momentarily forget?

I have viewed the cemeteries where they lie, accompanied in their graves by the ever-lasting tears of those whose worlds were shrivelled by their loss; row upon row, and neatly kept, of mothers' sons slain in their thousands, falling hundreds at a time, some dying now, some dying yet.

I cannot comprehend the scale on which these deaths occurred, yet here it is, at me feet, for my eyes to see. I have a sense of guilt because they, not I, endured the test which tested so many to destruction.


Anthem for Doomed Youth
By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.


..........

Is human society doomed, I wonder, to be like the teenage boy whose body outgrew his brain? Whose strength and ability to destroy grow greater, his wisdom still that of a toddler?

The Warrior?

Would I have joined a war,
in answer to my country's call?
When explosions shook the ground
and bullets sang
and over there a man
crumpled without a murmour,
the back of his head
completely gone,
would I have "Up at at em!"
Would I have been a hero,
storming alone the
machine-gun nest,
blowing its nestlings
to kingdom come
with a handgranade?

Or not?

Was I the one who
crouched in fear,
paralysed in icy terror,
with just my eyes and ears
released, to feed my dread?

Am I the man beneath that cross,
"He gave his life so we might live" ?

Am I the man whose grandson
smiles and gives me a kiss;
Am I the man who harbours
deep a secret shame
of cowardice?

Falling leaves

Falling leaves slip silently through the autumn air from their autumn glories,
And in that graveyard which I passed they'll lie and fade, as do memories of the dead.
On tombs and headstones names are carved which now are long forgotten;
"John" and "Jacob, "May" and Mary" who died so long ago.
Above the graves where lie their bones and who and what they were,
fallen leaves cover the ground -
gay today and stirred by breezes but not for very long -
Saddened by the winter rains, then they'll be a mourning cloak for those no longer mourned

Her Knight

He is her knight, ready to slay dragons,
Hurl himself in front of trains,
Stand between her and the drug-maddened teenager wielding a knife and with a single blow, send him reeling to the ground.
She has always been his to protect;
a precious life,
A jewel for him to guard.
And so it was that night they met
And when they danced he felt the very heart of all he was drawn out -
the essence of his being, he thought -
and in utter wonderment saw her tuck it in her love,
And cover it with kisses;
Then smiling, she handed hers to him, and in utter wonderment he heard her whispered words: "I've looked all my life for the man to give this to;
I've found him now, so please, my darling; please take care of it".

Each now the guardian of the other,
they faced adversity together,
endured a loss so great as to tear down city walls,
Hopes and expectations turned to disappointments
Yet their love flowed on through the landscapes of their lives -
a powerful stream,
Never once abating.

I saw him take her arm and guide her gently off the bus.
At 78 he's frail now, sees the world fuzzy round the edges, and as for slaying dragons,-
not much chance of that even though
He'd stand his ground
And staunchly face the danger.

She knows it too.
She knows, too, he`s all she`s got,
So she holds his arm the tighter.

The Sea Bird

Sea bird, why do you cry when you soar on the wind,,
your hopes carried high on scimeter wings?
See bird, see the sea birds pick at my bones
scattered and broken below on the shore.
I dreamed I was alive like you,
but when I woke, the dream and I died,
So I cry into the sky where the sea birds soar,
mourning my hopes
which lie smashed on the shore.

The Door

Near blinded by the dark
I fumbled for the key.
My fingers, stiffened by the cold,
fiddled with the lock.
Frost was in the air
and ice was under foot
I longed for the warmth inside.
I longed for the light.
At last I turned the key
and pushed at the door,
but you had built
a wall inside
and the door, I found,
was faked.

Sing to me

Sing to me in the silence
of my sleep where black
velvet waves bathe me deep
and feelings roll slithering
through the fingery feathers
of my dreams to haunt me
in the bright loud day.
Sing to me when I slip away
to dark, soft oblivion, never
knowing to return to
day or night;
never knowing again the light.

My Angel

What made me cold?
Did I feel your breath,
my Angel of Death -
you're watch in your hand
as the minutes tick by to my end?
All my life you've been
waiting here at my side -
we're the very closest of friends.
You've never strayed,
my Angel of Death,
more than a heart beat away.
The contract we signed
on the day of my birth
will be honoured
right to the end.
There's no legal loophole;
to let us get out;
it's the most watertight
thing in the world.
So Angel of Death,
when I feel your breath
and it makes me
shudder with cold,
I know you're here,
you're watch in your hand
as the minutes tick by to my end.

The Road

A long uphill road I go.
Where it ends no maps show.
I cannot see the way ahead,
and why I'm on it, no one said.
I only know I may not stop, nor have I any hope of rest, but looking back,
I see it track across the landscape of my life.
It seems I'm in a crowd - some faces I know, and some I love,
but then I see that all these others walk on roads apart, and on them walk alone.
We have but an illusion of companionship because no one in the world can share these roads we're walking on.
My road and I alone ascend;
only I know where it's led.
Only I can walk it to its end.