Archive for April 2020
You Should’ve Seen Us
In old film on parade in funny clothes you think we dressed up for you? so you could say, Takes me back. The old days. No! It was just us being who we were. That’s how you should’ve seen us. Instead, we look poor and grimy – old bricks in old walls, costumes and junk.…
Read MoreFrom: Church Fenton, 1958
A new crop of children, the plumpest yet, with bunches of chrysanths and gypsophila, and Mother’s dream is a procession to Sunday School. Left up to her you’ll spend the rest of your life in your best clothes. Dad’s playing cricket and won’t save you.
Read More1832
Charles Darwin aged 26 feels the crossover tides slip under the cabin floor to the Southern Ocean if only he`d stayed in Good Success Bay not sailed west set foot on land he can`t sleep in his journal he records swarms of butterflies blown out to sea Ehrenberg`s paper on phosphorescence…
Read MoreRock-Salt
‘The miracle of loving what dies’ – Albert Camus The miracle of a girl who – at school in summer in the twenties, dawdling with her friends in a brine cavern, among the carved passages under the fields – after getting back late one afternoon, was ordered to talk to the class about rock-salt, and…
Read MoreMile End Opera
The man with whiskers of ponytail hair growing out of the back of his shaved skull, the woman with the Anna Ford face, catacombed under London with other strangers. Cornered, like prison visitors. Swaying with the machinery. Also a boy and girl – he’s black, she’s white. Beautiful black and white. He’s telling her about…
Read MoreDeja Vu
Early morning sun. The day is bracing. There`s some wind in the trees. The fog moves. You`re at the mail-box down on the dusty road. A letter from England? Yes, it is. Popped inside those bundles of glossy junk. Your name on the envelope in my handwriting – strange, since I`m asleep in the bed…
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