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“... after the Latin ‘Adventus in Galliam’ of George Buchanan (1506-82) Badlands of Portugal, bye-bye For ever, starving crofts whose year-round crop Is lack of cash. And you, fair France, bonjour! Bonjour, adoring sponsor of the arts, Your air’s to die for, and your earth’s so rich Vineyards embrace your warm, umbrageous hills, Cows crowd your pastures, glens gabble with burns, Broad, open meadows fan out fields of flowers; Sailboats go gliding down long waterways, Fish throng your ponds, lochs, rivers, and the sea Where, left and right, your harbours greet the world With open arms ...”

“... As avidity circulated about the soccer game A bear lingered, nosing among the spruces, Under damp boughs, sampling scents, perching Briefly on a stump, while remaining curious, Until, on impulse, it stepped out on its hind legs, Causing the playing field to empty in a hurry, As in a monster film from the 1950s, a fog Of silence filtered in or should I say descended – Not far from the sculpture park and gardens Closing their gates, the globes twinkling out, An attendant with a flashlight swinging his Keys, almost like someone from Victorian London Or gas-lit New York, seemingly taciturn, a man (now a Midwesterner wearing thick glasses) Who’d be heading home to sit with pleasure Beside his fire pit, sip his cider, puff cheroots, In the small meadow of his yard, fringed By ash and elm, few lights of neighbours I woke that morning, he told me, recollecting A quayside in Nova Scotia, where I mused Into the mud at low tide, grubby after camping, Because I no longer had a home or wife, short Of finances ...”

“... Tumps of fish rotting He couldn’t sell The yellow yard of a cabin I’d gone to a party With friends Who slipped off Among cypress, sometime Before morning, When I was rousted To go down to his boat, And chug up the channel, Nauseous Baiting hooks with Anchovy * I once rowed Across a private lake Angling for bluegill The cedar skiff painted Maroon with white oars, An easy conversation With water Then to a road house * Somewhere in Ontario (Parry Sound, Penetanguishene?) Granite rounding up Through a glassy bay, Gulls, dragonflies, A thin woman in a vest At the edge of shore: By the end of the war We ate cats, called them Roof rabbits A gnarl in her accent Her small son Had a growth on one eye A day or two later I was with circus trucks Transporting The scent of elephants And mud From one farm town To the next * Following arrows To Newfoundland, Florida, Oklahoma And farther west * Sitting behind My buddy Henry Two locals Were discussing Total depravity ...”

“... The Mithraeum God-mulch. Apollo. Coventina. Snapped-off moons and pre-Christian crosses Pit the tor. Comeback king, Midas-touch Mithras, his moorland shrines Dank caves or knee-high proto-kirks North-west of Hexham, waits First for microbial, then feather-thin, Then skull-thick, unscabbarded dawn Butchering the bull-black darkness, Cutting Christmas Eve’s throat ...”

“... Measurement Nine and Seven, one by one, Lay face down on a home-made skateboard, Hauling it forward, inch by rope inch, Into the Tomb of the Eagles. Seven glissaded down Maes Howe’s Five-thousand-year-old chute, Walked unbowed down its entrance passage Whose stone slabs weigh forty-five cars. Nine chased Nine with dog-track speed Round Orphir’s circular kirk, Dropped down rung after midnight rung Metres into Wideford Hill ...”

“... Interlude I don’t believe she married him Because he was in the fish business Remarked Lois, which quieted The ensemble some From upstairs. An old Leonard Cohen tune It was unfortunate the Attorney-General was involved, If at a distance Lois was the sister of the AG Her husband puffy and long on anecdotes The banker at a bank that defaulted In the spacious woodlot behind the house Fireflies began to glitter Then flying squirrels, visiting birdfeeders A government vehicle sidled under a linden He should have joined the Coast Guard As his mother had wished Skin On the art museum steps A man in a wormy cardigan sprinkled salt ...”

“... Sometime later he was hit By a train – head lowered in the cold, Somewhat deaf by the age of 50. Not so repentant as startled, As in a movie where the dying man Gazes at some bird or cloud But still wouldn’t go to church Even if he could be carried. Among those middens of doubt Escaping seemed like a robust plan. But he didn’t know precisely What she was talking about ...”

“... The world is allusive. The mantis alludes to a twig To deflect the starling, the starling is a little stare Alluded to by Shakespeare: Jacques-Pierre, His name alluding not to spears or beers Or shaking, though the mantis trembles a little, Helpless refugee. Or I imagine she does, Feeding that fantasy to my heart, an organ Alluded to by the expression ‘courage’ Like ‘Shakespeare’ from the French, M ...”

“... for AliceThus all the books on any given subject are found standing together, and no additions or changes ever separate them.Melvil Dewey, A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a LibraryIrishFormal PeopleWaitressing for GodotGirl with Green ThighsA Farewell to ArmaghScottishA Drunk Man Licks at the ThistleTed GauntletSunset SnogFife: A User’s ManualCookbooksMoll FlanBuns and LoversOblomangeTart of DarknessMedicalThe IlliadRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are DeafGays’ AnatomyThe Scarlet PimpleTravelVenice: The MenaceMiddle GiddingLeaves of GrazThe Descent of ManchesterMedievalGaudy KnightThe Brompton Folding Mystery CycleD ...”

“... Suddenly I thought: ‘My God, he’s going to speak to me!’ ‘Am I right in thinking you’re Robert Melville?’ he said. ‘My name is Clark.’ ‘Indisputably, Sir Kenneth,’ I answered. I remember the word I used, because as soon as I said it I realised that it was ludicrously inappropriate. And I went on quickly: ‘It’s a fine Pasmore, isn’t ...”

“... A House A calendar under the couch Was several years old. It wasn’t My house. A note with crisp Letters, You are the love Of my life. I drank my coffee On a window seat watching Spring snow fall like sugar-cubes * Men were mulling The career of Senator Vandenberg Candles played across mirrors To a repeating pause In the wallpaper A polite house Like my aunt’s we visited At Easter, before the road To the lake expanded to four lanes Past muck farms Past onion and poultry warehouses * Flowers, subdued flowers In the large Turkish rug, while ladies Played canasta on leafy afternoons The kitchen, round arches, A screened porch where ivy edged To cross-braces Air filtering up and down Then sideways Depending on the hour A spraygun for ants There was that Clare Booth Luce business One said, any substance to that? * Light echoing down the stairs Where laundry equipment was aligned, Stored furniture, a sense of foreboding A handgun in a dresser drawer A leeking vial of something Like lubricant Associations How our mothers appeared When young, a wonderment The dressings of time, Unscrolling bark of birch And what was invented For our protection, kicking A curb after church, a pearly Sky * This hero needs discipline Or no one will love him Do I need so many critics? Where’s the distance The confidence? The nodding Heads of wild plants After another cold night ...”

“... after the Latin of George Buchanan (1506-82) Diogio de Murca, Head and King, Rector of Coimbra University, We all admire the way you’ve got ahead, But your Sub-King Co-ordinator of Commercialisation, your Head of Advanced, Enhanced Entrepeneurship, that wee Master Beleago, MBA (Monster of Bestial Accumulation) Whose ugly hooves tramp on our heads Is so pigheadedly convinced That he has wholly Mastered Being Ahead Of us, your mere human resources, he Goes and sells off everything: sells goats, Sells pigs, sells cattle, killing Whole herds so he can sell and sell; Birds of the air, fish of the sea – He sells the lot: your pears and nuts, Plums, peppers, reconditioned cucumbers Grown in your labs, your onions, garlic, Capers and corianders sprouting In students’ grassy gardens – all for sale ...”

“... Nae knickers, all fur coat Slurped Valvona and Crolla, Tweed-lapelled, elbow-patched, tartan-skirted, Kilted, Higgs-bosoned, tramless, trammelled and trammed, Awash with drowned witches prematurely damned, Prim as skimmed milk, cheesily floodlit, breezily, Galefully, Baltically cold with royal Lashings of tat and Hey-Jimmy wigs, high on swigs Of spinsterish, unmarried malt; City of singletons, salt Of the tilled earth, castled, unqueened, unkinged Capital of no one knows what yet, bankers’ Losses mounting your besieged Acropolises, the Waverley snow Spattering on Sir Walter’s deerhound, agley This way and that, on the black cat Crossing the kirkyard, the cartoon lassie With the silver tassie, the boy With a toy gun gunning for Covenanters, The carlin ranting by the Water of Leith, the filed, billable teeth Of lawyers, not proven under a barefaced cheek Of chloroform, high-tea sunsets, Jennerdoms of discreetest passion, Lace curtains drawn over mooning cannonballs, randy as the barrel of Mons Meg, All brass bells unpolished, Magdalenism, Darwinian butchery, Knox-talk, broderie, Brodies, bestial vennels, Drug deals done under far too many bridges, Midges, lost Provosts, the whole Botanic jing-bang, Rhododendrons and ducks, fresh pasta and spliced Paolozzis, Ramparts, rampant kirks, laddies’ and ladies’ hat-works, David Humery, domes with hearty, clarty splashings, The crowned spire, the dungeons, the crags, the old lags, the seagulls Raucous on carless early mornings, the Firth of Forth perjink past crowsteps Of informatics, draughty parallelograms, pandas and heritage pubs, Cannons pointing rudely down the Canongate, the New Town’s trig Windowboxes geraniumed for suffragettes’ parades, The Bioquarter, the Quartermile, the hanged, drawn, and quartered, Halls, gardens, harpsichords, waterfalls, jiggings and jeggings, Festivals, Days Estival with lawyers’ clerks, and couthy, uncouth doctors, Surgeons’ Hall surgeons, the burked dead, the Fringe, the redheads, Hoaxed hexes, Samhain dreamers, schemies, Anaemic academics, to-die-for grass, strollers, statuesque stalkers Capering on parade with fire-eaters, unicyclists, caber-tossers, pipes and drums Youtubed ad infinitum, the heady, reikie breath, and the rush of breathless newbies Just off the train and already never leaving ...”

“... called her ‘one of the few people I ever completely loved at first sight’, talked her up to Robert Creeley; Creeley, who spent so much time with Levertov when they were both in Provence that his wife was sure they were having an affair, introduced her to William Carlos Williams; Williams told her that her second collection, Here and Now ...”

“... Fishing at the Falls Beer is cold in the water A breeze is cold behind us, A draught from shadow, where it Is cavelike, the wall eaten under, A moody huddling, where rock Has fallen from the upper lip Like crumbs (we imagine) Until rock meets rock At the rubble of river How we’ve turned to fiction, Says Dick – all this hunger, Pitchy with wonder, came full Circle in a way ...”