Four Poems

After Hesiod

I read by my little cone of light on our flight home.
    The port-holes were black at first. But that poem

Gave a bird's-eye of a city. So I tried to scan
    For roads beside the margin. When they ran

In a slender line, like pixels wrapping round a string,
    I shut the book and stared below the wing.

Was it Portland? No answer from other cones of light.
    Just a lap-top on a tray. Somebody's white

Crown of hair, almost translucent, utterly still.
    And I felt, on my ribs, a constricting chill,

As I thought how those other people shone separate
    In the lights they flipped on, though they fit,

Somehow, in their lives, into the spreading grid.
    I shook it off. Then the chill returned when I hid

My head in the book, when the poem described how, 'Past the hills
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