David Morley

‘Index to Flamsteed’s Observations of the Fixed Stars’, 1798

Caroline Herschel turns her telescopeon her first comet, its swan’s neck of snow

dipping into the dark water of space.The curved tine of its tail trailing, flickering

signalling for a likeness of lightamong the nebulae and unbroken night

where two swans of ice and stone might sweepthe perihelion...

Note: ‘Yarak’ is an eastern term for when a hunting bird’s training, weight and mental focus all come together in the field.

Three sentences of this poem are adapted from Raptors of California by Hans Peeters and Pam Peeters.

Dad was not dad. Dad was the mad train screaming daily into the station of his home,

white-hot brakes shrieking, exploding across the platforms of the rooms. So regular,

so on time, you could set your watch. Five hours. Four. Three. Two. The skies were my watch.

I saw the evening redden, and I hid. Hiding to nowhere. A phrase I still hate.

Dad’s train shivered and...

This circle of grass needs to be sited just right – superlevel, softhard, southnorth. Horses are picky. Shires, Shetlands, they’ve attitude just like you and me. Making circus isn’t about our own people’s pleasures, not when there are beasts. Beasts come first and last. On a one to ten the horses are eleven, twelve. We’ve a camel too,...

Songs of Papusza

I was once besotted with a black-eyed boy. The young menof my kumpania stretched him out in an àshariba. Only then

did Dion´yzy Wajs, ancient Dion´yzy Wajs, pay his coin and court.He possessed harps, bought my mother and stepfather’s heart.

All I possessed were secret books. Dion´yzy arranged my bedas we both wished. There will be no children, he had...