At ten I read Mayakovsky had died… learned my first word of Russian,… watched my English teacher poke hi… with a well-chewed HB and get the… to join his easy mocking of my ess…

‘What would you put in the foundat… for future generations?’ ‘A horses… a ballet shoe, a horseshoe crab, a… a sheriff’s star, a pacemaker, a t… a ladybird, a love-letter, a laugh…

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There is no beginning. We saw Lew… laid down, when there was not much… and volcanic fires; watched long s… faults; laughed as Staffa cooled.… bruises were grated off like nutme…

“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how… Traipsing with his plough, the rur… Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talk… Sweating his sickly verses to enti… Lassies he’d never see again, stru…

No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, your cigarette glowed on in my ash… and sent up a long thread of such… I smiled to wonder who would belie…

A cup capsizes along the formica, slithering with a dull clatter. A few heads turn in the crowded ev… An old man is trying to get to his… from the low round stool fixed to…

The scaffolding has gone. The sky… Clanking poles and thudding planks… let light through At last, hammered the cage door of… bantering dusty brickie crew,

jollymerry hollyberry jollyberry merryholly happyjolly

Love rules. Love laughs. Love mar… is the wolf that guards the gate. Love is the food of music, art, po… fills us and fuels us and fires us… Love is terror. Love is sweat. Lo…

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashe… come on, let us sway together, under the trees, and to hell with…

The year goes, the woods decay, an… many a summer dies. The swan on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes… It goes, and ice appears, it holds… bears gulls that stand around surp…

Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.

In a little rainy mist of white an… we sat under an old tree, drank tea toasts to the powdery mo… undrunk got merry, played catch with the empty flask, on the pine…

Others are open. You give a high… as you win the Prospero stakes, an… bury your books deeper than any au… could find them sound or unsound. Did you ‘die a papist’, hate dogs,…