Alistair Elliot

for Martin and Diana

I

HWAET! This is what we   wanted to hear:

The floating one swings   still among rocks, hovering on hemp,   the embracing boat fast at anchor.   The coastguard on horseback guides them to Heorot   the shining hall – the loom of it lightens   the...

More and more often, knowing that you’re dying, I think of the letter-writers at the post office in that hot square, with their low desks and dip-pens waiting in the shade of their municipal trees for the illiterate victims of time and distance – the dealers in words, renewing or untying.

Whenever I passed them I would think of paying to have my raw wish wrapped in the empty nets...

On the Town Moor the butchers keep their cows, A healthy hospice near the abattoirs. Something is strange here, but they calmly browse, Flicking flies with the nameplate in their ears, And ruminate without conclusion, till I cross the skyline.

                   In my grey and blue They recognise me...

Sunday October 26, 1986

How do these things become us? – orange juice as we cast off, fudge as we meet the ocean funnelling into the inlet of Cape May, then boiled chestnuts, grey and wrinkled as the seas our stomachs ride (the heaving field of Delaware Bay) all morning, and for lunch a chocolate kiss and an apple from the pollen of two trees sensibly rooted, restaurants of bees ...

...

My favourite lavatory was on Ischia. It was a small round tower on a flat roof, Covered with plaster, vines and happy bees. The humming might have been the sun, its rays Shuffled in by the winking of a leaf In the arrow-slit, or else mild snoring from a Calmly-digesting-upside-down lucertola. It was a shit-house nothing could improve. It was my first Mediterranean summer.

If I could...