Poetry I rememberthat Easter we spent in Spain, singingtall cold church, warm sunstruck wallof the café roof garden we looked downon the open marble coffin swaying through the streetswhere a marble Christ lay sleepingin a bloodbath of rose petals when you bent your head to minetelling secrets like a childwhen your mothwing laughter alighted on …
Poetry no scars on me, lassyou said, walking awayand I could see clear, tooyour enamelled composure, whiteflawless as a wedding night sheetmagic doorsin the mountainside closed over anything I might have dared to saybeatas I might at that unbroken surfaceI am the child in the snowstripped bare of argument andshivering I revisitthe plain where new …
Poetry (for my son) You were sweet, bolshie, and two.I was betrayed, broken, broke.Reckless, we’d spent three pounds that weekat Oxfam, on a children’s tea-set: pink and green plastic, weird fat teapot shaped like a cabbage, as if the makershad nurtured a subliminal plan to get children to eat their greens. For a kitchen, an …
