{ Gillian Clarke: City. }

City
by Gillian Clarke

First, perhaps, we should view it across water,
passing two islands on a surging tide -
just short of the greatest ride and fall in the world.

Our ship would pitch where the sea wrestles the Severn,
muscular with rain from heart and hinterland,
sullen with slag and silky river silts.

Whoever they are, whatever tongue they speak,
from what continent, what distant island,
they crossed an ocean to help make the city.

Rounding the headland a hundred years ago,
most of them frozen, feverish, seasick, heartsick,
rolling up channel into the throat of the Severn,

they'd see the clock tower of the City Hall,
rumoured white buildings between broad avenues,
parkland and pleasure grounds beside the Taff.

For me it was 'let's pretend', lying awake
to the blink and sob of the Breaksea lightship,
my trip on the paddle steamer to Ilfracombe

a voyage from Africa, the Cardiff Queen
smashing the evening sea to smithereens,
a coming home made glamorous by dream

to a city we'd imagined into being.
Seeing's believing, believing's seeing.

{ Arundhathi Subramaniam: Return. }

Return
by Arundhathi Subramaniam

After so long you will be here again
and I will have to relearn how it works -

this dreaming playhouse of possibilities
choreographed by another accent
of weight and limb,

clusters of clothes and paper morphed
into new jigsaws of habitation

and those startled collisions of memory
and reality at the sounds

of a running tap, a muffled yawn,
the clink and stumble of presence
in another room.

And then the nights
when, turning over on the side,
the arm reaches out

and finds,
with some ancient riverine instinct,
a familiar lost tributary
of self.

{ Kate Rhodes: Angle-poise. }

Angle-poise
by Kate Rhodes

Misunderstanding the laws of nature
my father places himself

under a direct light,
hoping to dissolve by morning.

But the beams do nothing
except warm the roof of his mind,

bring his anxiety to a simmer,
brightness fizzing in his ears.

It reminds him of Sunday school angels
who wore their haloes

tipped at dangerous angles,
as if they wanted nothing more

than to fall back to earth,
render themselves human again.

On the wall ahead he sees
the outline of the lamp's crooked arm

and himself - a blurred thumbprint
on a circle of gold.

{ Jiban Narah: Midnight Moon. }

Midnight Moon
by Jiban Narah

The midnight moon climbs down
to pause on the bamboo span

Smearing itself with the blue from the sky
becomes rain the night long

Drenched in the rain
the moon’s hair grows longer
like the notes of Chaurasia’s flute

The spring carries the smell of the hair
to the river

It makes the hyacinth bloom
furtively

In the sun after the rain
the warbler drinks
the blue water of the river

gazing the while at the river

{ Bharat Majhi: I Will Rise This Time For Sure. }

I Will Rise This Time For Sure
by Bharat Majhi

I will rise this time for sure.

Those of you
who were vigilant so long,
could you ever call a tree a tree,
a river a river, a flower a flower,
a bird a bird, get wet in the rain and dew,
stand at some unfamiliar crossroad,
play with the sand,
spin a top, fly a kite?

You never opened your doors.
Instead you kept hanging
oil paintings on your walls,
reassuring yourselves
that this is morning, that is evening,
this is rain, that is winter,
this is a flower, that is a sapling of paddy,
this is a deer.
You kept chanting that
till it reached a crescendo.
In the process
the flesh fell off the limbs,
the body turned to bone
but the chanting about your wealth continued.

Mind you,
when I slept I did not really sleep.
I only dreamed for a while.
In the dream
I was some scrap-dealer's scales,
weighing only
oil paintings with broken frames.

{ Muriel Rukeyser: Waking This Morning. }

This Morning
by Muriel Rukeyser

Waking this morning,
a violent woman in the violent day
laughing.
                                     Past the line of memory
along the long body of your life
in which move childhood, youth, your lifetime of touch,
eyes, lips, chest, belly, sex, legs, to the waves of the sheet.
I look past this little planet
on the city windowsill
to the tall towers’ bookshapes, crushed together in greed,
the river flashing flowing corroded,
the intricate harbor and the sea, the wars, the moon the planets
                    all who people space
in the sun visible invisible.
African violets in the light
breathing, in a breathing universe.          I want strong peace, and delight,
the wild good.
I want to make my touch poems:
to find my morning, to find you entire
alive moving among the anti-touch people.

                                          I say across the waves of the air to you:
today once more
I will try to be non-violent
one more day
this morning, waking this world away
in this violent day.

{ WS Graham: The Beast in the Space. }

The Beast in the Space
WS Graham

Shut up. Shut up. There’s nobody here.
If you think you hear somebody knocking
On the other side of the words, pay
No attention. It will be only
The great creature that thumps its tail
On silence on the other side.
If yo do not even hear that
I’ll give the beast a quick skelp
And through Art you’ll hear it yelp.

The beast that lives on silence takes
Its bite out of either side.
It pads and sniffs between us. Now
It comes and laps my meaning up.
Call it over. Call it across
This curious necessary space.
Get off, you terrible inhabiter
Of silence. I’ll not have it. Get
Away to whoever it is will have you.

He’s gone and if he’s gone to you
That’s fair enough. For on this side
Of the words it’s late. The heavy moth
Bangs on the pane. The whole house
Is sleeping and I remember
I am not here, only the space
I sent the terrible beast across.
Watch. He bites. Listen gently
To any song he snorts or growls
And give him food. He means neither
Well or ill towards you. Above
All, shut up. Give him your love.

{ you'll come back for me. }

Okay, so, no more poetry today. I think I'm having an overload or something. How ridic.

In other news: today I really, really, really must blu-tack my postcards to the wall. If I don't do it now, I'm going to lose them.

Speaking of postcards, hands up if I owe you one but haven't actually sent it yet? I think I've done most everyone who put their name down but let me know if not. I should keep track of this shit but I'm just plum lazy.

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Jesus Nina Simone! Play that thang.

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Blah blah blah. I deleted all this because it was even more boring than the above.