Books, Poems, Thoughts
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I fell on to the pebbles from his shoulders: ‘Are you all right?’ my first anxious words – adults had so far to fall. He told my mother how absurd I was to worry about him. I never thought how scared he must have been for me. I couldn’t get my key to turn and kept
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‘The hills are alive’ he sang every day as he dressed, until he was breathless and pumped full of drugs. In the end his heart couldn’t cope – perhaps it was all for the best. He carried on working and lived with habitual zest – tenacious of life, he’d never call illness a friend. ‘The hills are
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All you know for certain is you’ll die and so will all your friends; you spend your busy life avoiding this, the only thing you know. You don’t know how – a slow death years away, the heart attack tomorrow, the wasting of disease, a sudden accident, gunfire in the morning, or just old age. It’s
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I was looking for my muse and I found you – sleeping between freshly laundered sheets while wolves you took for dogs were howling in the dark beyond your safety zone. Iced rowanberries in the snow and strong white arms – your concentration in the library at Yuryatin – abandoned weeping on the coffin of your lover: you
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On staring at a photo of Osip Mandelstam OK Osya, you’ve made your point – you’ve seen it all – you’re right. As your eyes imply, I’ve never heard that knock on the door at night; never drunk for consolation tears of a see-through Petropolis – town where Gogol’s devil lights the lamps; never perched on a ledge
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“Keep clear of lifts” the sign dictates uncompromising in a dismal station, not – “Keep clear when the lift is moving”, “Don’t leave your luggage by the lift”, “No access to unauthorised personnel”, or even, “Beware this lift – it bites”. but – world without end, KEEP CLEAR OF LIFTS. Don’t succumb to that flight of fancy – you’re
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In memory of my old friend, the late Canon Gerald Hudson You’re older this time, driving more erratic, eyes more bloodshot. We talk and read and talk again. Not everything is said. We’ve shared our pilgrimage for years; When it’s good-bye, how will we know? Your memories are of Larkin and of Keyes, your peers
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A woman broke an alabaster jar, Emptied it over the head of a prophet. She wept. Her tears fell on his feet. A woman enraptured drank his words. Her sister, cumbered with too much serving, Complained, but nothing could move her. A woman afflicted with seven devils Loved the prophet for his healing, Came to
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Marie had sex with Arthur once in Bow. The doctor spoke. He prophesied a birth. Friends tried to cheer her up: you never know, Your Arthur might be back some time – although Who cares? There’s other men, there’s not a dearth. Marie had sex with Arthur once in Bow. She wondered why she fell for
Virginia Rounding: Author, editor, proofreader, indexer 