2010
6.184
3.vii.25
a street through thick glasses
ekphrastic for Henry Kondracki’s 1991 ‘Old Man’
here’s the picture of time now gone
a bottle blur
street to be crossed
pale florid
the underhat
all ears, more nose
by habit of another age
towards a punt
you never know
so the neck noose raggedy
an almost ampelman
almost with a will
names fade where the numbers remain
it’s a day for funny hats
it’s every day further along
a street takes all this in
nor are words required
2009
6.183
2.vii.25
sad old things
dust gathering
and how we’re home
like words we forget still were
jugs upstairs
all their underparts
words ringing round with toil of us
mad hair and how to comb?
cupboard scuttle too dark to explore
things left and things forgotten
rubble under
rich with lost wishes
old harvest to scythe
all kinds of rust
moonlight lost
a topple of fences
day unshaven
even till last joy
all become
even again
and we’re stone
2008
6.182
1.vii.25
in a stone circle
at Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran
heaving grief
tired as fear
a hard man
terrible
here’s respect!
we place it here
the crouch of bone
elk and auroch, boar and fox
these all whom he brought down
man of stone
strong armed
here’s his face on yours
here’s hate and tender too
by a sheep ridden ruin
by the dung rusted byre
a wall of were
the clover overgrows
by power of death alone
we work
and the big man is planted
to the underlife
all this stone we’d heave
we’d haul
and more
another mile we’d haul
to keep the fucker down