Selected poems
Not in a war zone
You say you are not in a war zone,
but look at all these deaths mounting up around you,
this friend and that one suddenly gone,
the news coming unexpectedly and from
unexpected sources, and with each passing,
other deaths: the death of friendships,
of anticipation, the death of familiar voices;
and look how the shirt you are wearing is rent,
how it has become a garment of mourning,
half slipping off your shoulders,
the skin and bone of your dreams poking through,
pale, depleted, smeared with ashes,
right here in this lively city far from any front,
supposedly far from the lunacy of war.
This is the life
The curve of comprehension begins so steeply
it is almost visible.
I watch my son's eyes at eight weeks soaking
in light, tracking movement, engaging,
and listen to him vocalise, his own language
so rich and nuanced, so mellifluous,
so unrestrained and musical, each separate
cadence of desire or need its own note.
Already he smiles, responds, burbles at the world
as if it is fruit ripe for picking,
as if it is his natural domain, however helpless
he may be, however incomprehensible it seems.
It is like watching something enhanced, something
expanding and taking shape before my eyes,
promise it will take decades to fulfil,
only a small part of which I will witness:
so how can I think at this moment of decline,
of constriction, of life diminishing,
of the mouse and his keeper in Flowers for Algernon,
of the end that lies within the beginning
biding its time, waiting to manifest,
as it has with my parents, as it is with me?
Tonight, the universe is vast and dark
I hold loss again in my arms
as it holds me though not the way
a lover does or did when still
my body was held that way
and loved and felt itself
an object of desire
as did the flickering soul within
that way it thinks may never
come again and so loss comes
with its bittersweet comfort
of being always there
and never once abandoning
more bitter because it is not alone
but in the company of longing
that too will not desist
and pines for that way again
and will not rest as time does not
time growing short
whilst memory turns and turns
in its trembling hands
the burnt out embers of love
puzzled that it has come to this
so soon and yet again
and that way is once more a dream.
So the road diverged
So the road diverged and he went a different path,
and then another, taking turn after turn
into deep forests steeped in shadows,
further and further from everything familiar,
and he came across men, women, children
who walked with him for a time before vanishing,
who shared food and