Mr President,
valued members of the Committee,
Your Excellencies.
Today
I have come to accept
the Nobel Prize for Literature
will forever elude me.
My Acceptance Speech
A Balance
War.
Poverty.
Extinction.
Plagues ancient
and plagues modern.
Abuse of children, women.
Global warming. Exploitation. Genocide.
The horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding.
Gradations of blue in hill after hill at dusk.
A man, a woman, laughing in the street.
The casual kindness of a stranger.
The smell of bread baking.
A candle in a window.
A blackbird’s song.
Piano scales.
You.
My father’s handgun
My father’s handgun was a Walther PPK.
Good guy that I am, after his death
I took it down to the local station.
Its weight felt oddly reassuring in my hand
but it was no use to me.
I never found the ammunition.
Map reading at 60
Should I feel lost these days
I will unfold my trusty Ordnance Survey map –
brittle from many a soaking, sunshine, sweat;
and though it is coming apart at the creases,
and yellowish areas of terra incognita
are spreading out from frayed edges,
when I take off my glasses to peer
at the whorls, dots, cabbalistic symbols,
I think I can make out where I’m at – look:
miles north of this place called Despondency,
and – except for a ravine and some ridges –
not far, not so far south of Contentment at all.
My Covid-19 Song
so somewhere in China
a new kind of virus breeds
they say bats are involved
and open markets and now
it spreads and breeds
new verbs so now we’re
social distancing
with the best of them
and all out of face masks
and the shelves empty of bog rolls
surely someone somewhere
must be sitting on millions of them
taking a gleeful crap
in the lap of luxury
the selfish asshole
and in the twilight
you walk the dog
the blinds are down and
the shutters closed
everywhere
provoking medieval visions
how they’re all lying dead
behind those blind windows but
the day was absurdly clear and bright
and there’s a golden moon in the sky
and one golden star
all alone
Jack at sixteen
Sometimes
he just stands there.
Just stands,
back hunched,
head drooping,
milky eyes unfocused.
Sans eyes,
sans teeth –
sans everything?
Whether he’s lost,
unseeing,
wondering where he’s at;
or whether
he’s following a fox
into the undergrowth
while you, helpless,
call his name
until he bursts from bushes
happy:
that he cannot tell you.
That is for you to decide.
New Year’s Day
Time to take the dog out
into pale sun.
Pleasant enough walking,
until we reach
the dark curtain of fir trees
where the path,
rising, turns to ice.
As if on cue the noon bell rings:
time to turn back.
After all, we’re no spring chickens;
after all,
we’ve been to that top before,
know that view;
why bother? After all, it’s only
the first day of a whole new year.
So we go on.
Llanthony
The wagtails anyway looked lively
and the freshly shorn sheep were bleating.
The place was deserted. The monks long gone;
the car park empty; the hotel closed.
Only a very old couple were limping
in the skeleton of Llanthony Priory:
the walking wounded…
I put a spring in my step; felt a twinge
in my back, a cold wind on my neck.
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near?
Ah –
but wasn’t it lovely –
Patrishow
No hermit now at Patrishow
above the valley of the Grwyne Fawr.
The gifts left at the Holy Well
forlorn; the grey church silent.
Snail shells lie scattered on a stone.
The thrush who guards this place
has found a use for an old grave.
He hops from stone to branch, serene.
He knows we are just passing.
Sunday morning at the canal
Across the fields to Llangattock.
At the top of the hill
the latch clangs back on the metal gate.
The canal sleeps on.
Two boats, barely moving
on still brown water.
A hiker; exchange of a nod.
Perfect reflections of foliage.
Unseen flutter of wings;
the call of a wood pigeon.
Fat stone bridges.
The sound of my footsteps.
