In the event of
1
if you want to get the most out of these poems value for money or more significantly value for time discard expectation first be who and how you are a pilgrim venturing by eye down the black on white path of the page
2
in the absence of clocks church bells or calls to prayer from a tower or temple time is silent accumulating and dispersing at the same pace always what’s gained on one hand soon spent by the other
3
whenever I feel need of support I return to Cold Mountain a human existence so precarious he resorted to begging and eating weeds and yet so rich in every other way he may not even have existed at least in the guise posterity imposes on him
4
to make his country more efficient the dictator introduced clocks and had them synchronised so the peasants who formerly rose with the sun and returned from their fields at dusk now had an accurate measure of the working day though still there was little profit to be made from their smallholdings after tithes and taxes were paid to their rulers
5
here comes one now possessions in a kitchen bin liner trouser cuffs frayed from dragging what’s left of his mind not here at all in this place and time
6
a half truth is still half a lie the river and the curved boats that ply it the storm at sea and the widows it makes of decent women a village below the snowline where chimney smoke drifts between houses policies of the next government if it is the next government
7
you go to the ground and colour of the ground to nature large monochromatic areas moss and myrtle juniper and bamboo the light in its infinite agility subtler in shape than pigment changes and changes or damps down and shadows variegation
8
in the same week Tane Norton died so too did Sugar Man Robbie Robertson and Brice Marden a generation over eighty passing on passing their energy on joining hands with the fire dead of Lahaina war dead of Ukraine from an increasingly debilitated planet
The outcome
1
seagulls shriek and circle
over the remains of a drowned goat
washed down by the flood
other perhaps more horrible things
lie under the brown water
waiting to surface
some are only ideas
or long memories of boundary disputes
night footsteps on a gravel road
a boat with a motor bubbling at the stern
explores channels for hazards
backing or turning into cleared passages
people it’s hard to feel solidarity with
arrive to collect finds mong the debris
and are gone by nightfall
sight and taste and smell are lost
underneath where fright is instant
and silent to the end
2
in the empty house there are traces
of three generations
polished brass shell cases from a war
and a croquet trophy
orange froth in the sink
after a pasta meal
curtains drawn but light through the doorway
articulates an inner room
we who have never lived here
can only surmise
face masks boiler suits polythene overshoes
fingertip-searching the flower beds for evidence
3
mirrors forget the images
reflected in them
and even the cleanest window
interrupts the sky
light so often used
as a metaphor for clarity
can be more subtle
than we are persuaded
narratives of the past
lead to unwarranted expectations
not all of which
make it into history
a distant cry
signals a return home
only time can confirm
as sorrowful or joyful
the bright side
is the side where the residents
dressed for the occasion
meet and discuss
in fiction the investigator
is the maestro
drawing the threads
into a solution
yet any artist knows
it is the miscreant
without whom there’d be no story
who started all this