1

If not for oneself, leave me a carton      (a garland that holds
of idle black blossom in the garden where you walk

I peel you upside-down from the vase unaware you are naked
             underneath skin bowed—     talk of sunlight, pollen      attacking your
eyes livid, fingers blue
the ink of asphodels      trembling      still      in the lines
of your hand      and aside
from shiver & pace swans threading
a second horizon      and aside from them
pond of nothing

      except perhaps a willow      lipped in perspex stone, or costume
      artillery      only in the silkiest had we a stencil of sky-coloured leaves—      audible
      & leaping      we would read notes from the gallows & float
      in light of
                    idioms
                    but a centipede away
                    you crack only a vertebra of silence
                    at the afternoon, dig a hundred
                    quivering heels into socks
                    of red quilty mud
                    . . .

                    hairpins of rainwater gaining behind me, beat of a drum
                    of fawn-green leaves
                    the passage of itinerancy malformed in hibiscus

                    we drift downstream

Tsvetaeva weeding banks of the Styx, her moulting heart a periscope
into the persimmon lights of Prague

language clear & water weary, she cuts our orbit piecemeal—
ducks coins you fire into lamps to keep the sun from shining

we enter the vase from behind the rosebush—  fingers fall away and you, injured still, coil
into a swallow dive (paisley underbelly, tinsel-tipped, wing-singed
               one-sixth of a drachma failing on your lips
swift, flapping, shadowful,

it is not
that you will not return      (today, yesterday, tomorrow
                                                    but that the thimble you gave me is as appalling for rowing
                                                                   as for drinking





                                 2


. . . reddened by rime & rot        rose leaves arch and turn amid fingers of second winter
                                    —I bend around a corner
                     scuffle of pigeons harrowing a bread roll
grey dog in a window slanting a gouache eye      bowl of hot purple mussels
hands waving paper-cuts into an aviary of goodbyes

we weave dishevelled
beneath windmills gnawing sky into tethers
     of cloudweb

a tinderbox peddling spider love opens       onto the rift
of twelve soft      vein-cheeked women who glide,      glide      (black & white      back
& forth      murmuring always      (in unhurried motion
the same eight bars of Peter

and the Wolf—
night folds away with

        (stay
                   he exits fierily disappearing majestically into eyelets of brick
        wearing the carpet
        in-
                   to warbles of thunder
. . .

permafrost down the window
tongue lolls into calamine, rolls over shoals
rocks, coals
and sandbars      pink-purple shells      a-clap      a      clap      (full of thought and
civilised commentary

a thing once called midnight      glimpses back in the dark      wind      blowing
                    across an utterly black pitch of saline
                    crosses fissuring gold sparks and
                    mud and stars, mud and
      stars, mud
      and stars
      and lightening
      and a stranger who opines to neither stay nor leave
      but squats inside the acorn tree within the orthodoxy of a cape

invisible chaos into a flotilla of spears, impression of salt hammers
openly hewn—     cannot wash ghost from gist of the daffodil





                                      3




See how deeply I dive, clutching seaweed in my hands.
Akhmatova


5th February        such little bonheur
               in the half-present moment
               instead brouhaha
               velcro stars      verse cracking winter
               full of tinsel bees      a flame smudging wax across
a gunpowder sky

               voice from the fountain came and said come
               grey deer woman picked us an oversized heart
from the moat of twinkling aspirin in which our oily eyes
               had been swarming       amorous        like drunken carp
perhaps because you                (recognised
               the forked eternity in her gesture &
               harsh unhurried
               caught nape
               my
               backwards
     (in the quick of your hand
               until the imprint      of fingertips      had been transferred      until the up-
     turned grave I had hitherto forgotten      roused the barb of wasp-whispers      howl
of nothing      ruffle of half-moons tucked into hunting eyelids

     decanted throat      loosens
               bands of neck-tie      and touch-      words stumble      (errant      madly
      in the gorse of your hair

shadow of baobab tree leaning into broken paths      saluting ceremoniously
shades of false white

                 you look on      as I speak      (reflecting
                 the law of sandbanks
                 pulse pressed turbulently      palpably      into the corners of my tidal
                 dress