The Spinster Abroad

Her English bowels, raised on carrots and starch,
Cannot support paella. Instead she shelters
Beneath her parasol at the pool,
Growing brown as a walnut and falling tipsy asleep.

Inspired by Judi Dench in‘Notes from a Scandal.’

Gay porn

His slightly pinkish elbows
Next to the white soles of his feet,
Under irresistible panting
Down to another’s sweat.

England

Despite summer
The peacocks are
Marching estates
In misty rain.

An Incident

The tall young man in a T-shirt
Is singing a Purcell song, when
In the street outside a firecracker explodes.
We startle; the young man sings on.

Henry Purcell, ‘Music for a While.’

A Sentimental Marriage

After a day spent in their masculine and feminine worlds,
He selling houses, she buying art,
They meet for digestion. ‘Liebe ist was leckeres,’
She says; ‘Mir schmeckt sie auch,’ he responds.

Die Liebe ist lecker: Love is tasty.
Mir schmeckt sie auch: I think so too.

Metamorphosis (I)

On the U-Bahn, the angel wings came,
Sprouting at last decisively from my back.
I had waited long – and perhaps my run had dislodged them,
Through the bowels of the station to the train I had got on.

Eno and U2

Eno interviewed about Bono
Is an impeccable courtier;
Speaking soundbites of honour,
Eyes twinkling cheer.

The Artists

The motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern. – Robert Louis Stevenson.

Last night I made the connection. Hamlet and Iago are both alike
United and isolated by intelligence, are content
To hold and let fly their drama’s kite
For good or ill, to aesthetic ends.

Autobiography

What was the poison in the kiss you gave
That ruined what followed then?
Everything ruined: love gone, faith in love gone, life
Like the wind howling over a broke monastery wall.

What happens after we die, if anything?

That’s it, he said, that is it,
Upon which she thought of her children
Stepping into that darkness
And longed to and would help them.