WHAT WE THOUGHT WE KNEW

Once we might have believed, like Pliny the Elder did, that honey
comes out of the air and is chiefly formed at the rising of the stars.
There is no honey, said Aristotle, before the rising of the Pleiades
just before dawn: once just before dawn we had that sense of honey 

rising, stars flowed wordless through our bloodstreams, we imagined
we would take our place among the Pleiades – figures chalked against
the sky, the great lovers, star crossed: but space between us condensed
then flew apart until we could no longer touch skin through heaven’s  

architraves while species died in their thousands and what we thought
we knew also faced extinction; once someone somewhere built an ark
but forgot to tell the animals so the last Bouvier’s red colobus, the last 

Puerto Rican tree frog, the last gold Martinique Parrot which all ought
to have been saved instead became faint watermarks orbiting the dark
with soot-ringed eyes watching dancing bees become a thing of the past.

[Highly commended in the Café Writer’s Prize, 2011]

* * *

TWO POEMS FROM FATHOM (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2007)

WOMAN BRUSHING HER HAIR

after Degas

In spring, I lived underwater with it –
my dappled hands held auburn hanks
like uncoiled ropes to brush and brush
while my thoughts drifted upwards
into the pearly green and umber.

By summer, my face was a scribble –
no eyes, a mute mouth, I forced the auburn
from its lair at the nape of my neck,
brushed it over my brow in torrents
with hands like ham bones: by now
I knew I couldn’t tame it by myself.

That autumn, I sat on a bed while my maid
tried to groom it. Does it hurt? she asked,
as the auburn itself fell like a curtain
over any other possibilities my life held;
she tilted her head and pulled, spilling
a ginger snakeskin over my face and forearms.

In winter, roasting chestnuts, I was caught
in the blaze, my dress became flames,
my maid grabbed the inferno and tried
to brush it out; a jigsaw of shapes held us firmly
in place while in one corner, just in the picture,
a dab of dappled pearl.

[Winner of the New Writer Prize, 1997]

SUR LE PONT DES ARTS

He’s looking at a painting of a river and trees,
houses roughly charcoaled in against a foggy smudge,
a foreground blob that could be a terrier’s shadow  

or a black hole of invisible light, dark matter
sucking viewers into the artist’s untidy mind,
showing them the dissatisfied wife left clearing plates 

after a silent Sunday lunch, the son who bores him,
the treasured daughter who ran off to the Pyrenees
with a specialist in sustainable energy 

who builds houses out of cartons and solar panels,
where rotas of guests are needed so that they can pee
frequently in order to keep the bathroom lights on.

He’s looking at a painting of a river and trees
and thinking about his mistress whom he hasn’t seen
for three weeks because she’s gone to stay with a sister

he knows she’s just invented; now he’s thinking about
his new hat, a smart homburg, and how superior
it is to the artist’s floppy hat which is hiding, 

probably, a mess of impasto passing for brains;
he’s thinking of the terrier, who has just caught up
and is now regarding him with small, adoring eyes.

He’s thinking it costs him more to feed the terrier
than buying the new homburgs he prefers to his wife.
He’s thinking his mistress is a liar, the artist

is an impostor, the artist’s wife and son should leave,
the artist’s daughter and her husband are complete fakes
and that his own wife is less attractive than a hat.

He’s thinking that his terrier is an expensive
excrescence; in fact, he’s wishing he was someone else.
He’s looking at a painting of a river and trees.

* * *

TWO POEMS FROM SANSKRITI

(first published Mascara Literary Review)

MAKER

this is the place where broken
things come to rest from their brokenness

they can’t get the taste of terracotta
out of their mouths

they know they came from mud,
only yesterday 

they were a substance
to be walked on

now their bridles, palms, trunks,
wings hold unexplained shadows

the moon
eyes the world from their jagged holes

above them, peacocks roost in the trees -
Neem, Arjuna and the Banyan

under which Krishna sat
scooping butter

the bark’s twisted textures
are ropes going into the earth

resting before the spring burst
of growth, green after green

reaching for the sky with its
shattering light.

SILVER OAK

instead of heat and light
grey shrouds

each morning a burial
we fight our way out of:

your sentinel stillness
seen through muslin 

would look at home
in snow-covered tundra, 

among the herds
and ice-lapped edges:

yet this is India too,
her private winter face

cleansed and secretive
in her dressing table mirror

with thoughts of spring
a world turned away from -

waiting for reflections
on a silver bark.

* * *

FIVE POEMS FROM TAKING MESOPOTAMIA

(First published in Ambit, 2011)

PROLOGUE

When I Join the Ranks: what to do and how to do it 

If you want some advice, don’t cling to the company
of untidy soldiers or soldiers of doubtful character,
if you do, you can’t expect officers or anyone else
to have a high opinion of you. Your living quarters

should speak of mathematical precision. Down each
side are arranged the beds, turned up during the day
to form a seat; and overhead is a shelf which contains
certain limited portions of your equipment with other

articles hung from below on little hooks. Make sure
these are kept always tidy and few. Down the centre
you will find the plain but well-scrubbed barrack tables
and these last complete the furnishing of the room.

When under canvas life is much the same except
at dawn you’ll hear the songs of robin and chaffinch
and see mist rising over distant hills. Now is the time
to practice folding and unfolding your army blanket.

In camp you will never want for company, the sight
of canvas soon brings in the inhabitants of the local
countryside who are only too glad to spend some time
with the lads. If you miss your girl stop reading here.

AUGUST

                1916

		The land and sky trick us with mirages of enemy
		troops becoming trestle tables which float over
		the ground towards us before turning into camels
		and disappearing into thin air. We can’t tell how
		many or how close they are – we dive for cover,
		frightened by bushes: red sunset behind a mound
		is the flare of shrapnel over shepherds watching
		their flocks under the first stars. These must be
		the rocks where Cain heard God’s voice thunder
		Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!

		2006

		Basra, ancient city of parks smelling of flowers
		and spices, renowned place of coffee-houses,
		mosques and the intricate facades of buildings
		of old Ashar: everywhere water mirrors sky -
		kingfishers and bee-eaters dart in the shadows
		of date palms. Sinbad’s ravaged city, now half
		populated by children, the young men dead in
		the wars. Hamid, eleven, gets up at five to collect
		scrap metal, building a new life from Pepsi cans.
		He says peace is the greatest treasure we could ask for.

THE CALL-UP

An age ago, spring turned early into ceanothus summer, skies
scoured by keening swifts, and our sons ran out of the pavilion

shining in their whiter than white whites, their bats held high:
we waited in the long grass, our shoes drowned in buttercups

as they faced over after over, the onlookers cheering: at least
it wasn’t France, we said, its boulevards cobbled with skulls:

there was a pair of goshawks nesting in the wood that year, fierce
birds hooked to the sky like medieval warriors, the female three

times the size of her mate who hardly dared to visit his chicks
with strips of flesh, knowing he came too close on pain of death.

BAPTISM

They could have been made from stone, the same
stone of country houses with private gardens, walls

spurting valerian: they were coatless, cold as slate
when marsh water flowed into the trenches carrying 

cholera and they went over the top in darkness to meet
darkness lit by enemy flares, stumbling and drowning 

with the bolting mules, too numb to know what they
were doing or which way they were supposed to go:

back home the font was wreathed with laurel: it stood
sunlit, under an angel leading a child away from harm

HOSPITAL BARGE ON THE TIGRIS 1915

In April the desert blooms, even in war:
flowering earlier than a Welsh spring, clustered
along the river bank, rain-scented on a bare, wind blown
canvas - mallow, shepherd’s purse, early-sown
green barley, yellow trefoil and wild mustard,
each day budding with promise of more:

And on the Tigris, a slow hospital ship
carries the wounded, so recently young boys
running home from school down weed-skirted lanes,
now tents of white skin hanging slack on frames
of bone: flies buzz in their mouths, the noise
drowned by the wheel’s revolving slap.

* * *

TWO POEMS FROM WHO CAN CLIMB THE SKY?

(First published in World Literature Today)

ENKIDU IN THE WILDERNESS

“Coated in hair like the god of animals With the gazelles he grazes on grasses.” -- The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet I)

In a mountainous and wooded country with his doe eyed favourite
	   he’s far from the sheshgallu treading the thousand steps:
far from the incantations of the kalû in the shukkinna

the harp found in the death pit of the Royal Cemetery, the bearded
	   bull of solid gold at Ur, the headdress of lapis-lazuli and cornelian,
the woman made of squares, the scarab-swaddled baby:

he places his hand on her flank, her vellum hide
       hiding a shop of stories: on the stele
they press on up towards to the great breast of the sun

[Note: sheshgallu – priest; kalû – chorus; shukkinna – temple; stele – inscribed monument]

THE BARBER’S STORY: 1

Something for the weekend? I almost said, then stopped myself
my hairiest customer ever had also been the most taciturn.

I plastered on the unguents and perfumes: he seemed lost
in his thoughts, away in the desert perhaps with his antelopes.

This was the creature (or man) Lord Gilgamesh fought, defeated,
and bonded with for life. He knew better than to win at that game.

There he sat while I rubbed his face with attar of roses, tea tree oil
and myrrh. His body was lithe as a serpent’s under the pelt.

His pectorals caught the sun like a muscled river, his head hair
black as tar, his eyes dark as wine in the bottom of a pitcher.

In fact, he was beautiful, like one of those eunuchs who dance
at festivals, exotic and desultry, raising temperatures and desire.

As for the fur, it took me an hour to sweep up. My wife wanted it
to stuff pillows but it stank of animals, so we threw it in the Tigris.