Four Poems

Passing the Steading

If tups and fank are all but ghosts
the void they haunt is living earth:
The way damp worsted rubbed on stone
or shapes we work dissolve in rain.


A Brim of Lather on the Bay of Cologne

The day shrank like a pulli
In the roaring sky of your absence in the rattling rage

Of the rain the black bag scraped the brickwork sparring
With the magpies for the branch-space in our pine

I read my Magda Tulli
Then watched the rooks and startled clouds engage

In feats of daring till my wheels locked on the water kissing
The kerb of loss and spinning into early middle age

The explorative mouse at once resumed its labours
While you in clarity crossed the swollen theory of the Rhine
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