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From Moths (1999)


Part One: Ip


100 hours community service

the youths are in the scheme labouring
in the paleogardens in rain with rakes
it is calm but damp here here
beneath the awnings I have spent night
a cross the plot no remainder
carry what tumbles the left lying alone lyric of lovetime
you see I too am working at night in a freelance fashion
ants struggle over immemorial speed bumps ageing
gathering what we call “detritus” they call “----”
water gathers on
the brow of my thighs the naughtie lover that
I am yours goes without saying and doing yes let’s talk of it
of it an awned infinity of nesting buying time
by way of a reminder
I love the sunlight of your laughter
tumbling on like rain
across the pain into a drain.
(a chord changes
tuning into lovetime
the ant queen’s turning
beneath the leaves are burning)


-----
what poetry is

even from way
up here I can
see the buck-teeth
of lovers talking
hands on their throwing
groins wondering at
the zinc-frost-finger
print on the perspex
case protection
water wears away a lane
prospect endlessly casting up
bleached bonelike stuff
up is up on the barnacle
relief of a concrete you
gingerly treads a
shoe protection
what else but this this
what else but this this
the power of the vertebrates
who grew up tall and slim with filters
who grew tired and lay
down is in spars along a cumbrian beach all the way to bangor
dearer with this we bit the bridge to


-----
the public life of insects

peace child november
was a bad day for all of us coming
as it did midweek in a volley ball of rain
which of my effigy of you bore the brunt
off on the eleventh day of june
all previous to this
the ribs mustered at the ornate
boss of the abbey whose ruin begs
a question of the gravel my foot
lets up a swarm of netted translucent bodies— romance
this time of year lots of people tend to gather spontaneously in straw-stressed fields they all fall in love in an instant
they wear this simultaneousness like an emblem it says “yes by the way we did
do better than the both of you who failed”
mmm maybe we should’ve seen it through or
waited on an autumn dayful of prosperous spectres

better still moths
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