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“... Traveller’s Tales: Chapter 12 The cruise ship heads out of the harbour before dark in the direction of Point Blanco and the sea beyond, the din from the convent playground below having subsided and the sickle moon making ready to take up its post beside Venus and Jupiter, aligned this month, and on display above the flood-lit cathedral. They erupt like cicada whirr, like starlings exploding from a tree at any sudden sharp sound, dozens of three-year-olds in grey smocks pouring from their captivity at end of day, nuns chasing after them in their winged cornettes, herding them the way border collies herd sheep ...”

“... Micino I found under the tongue, when he opened wide, a harvest of minuscule Thai red peppers clustered either side of his pink frenulum, twin fields of fiery stalagmites. And as if that were not passing strange enough, behind and above two shelves of tiny Lucite drawers to my alarm one of which you chose to open and examine closely in its moist mucosa casing before gently replacing it, and without consequence as to structure or disquiet on sleeping Micino’s part, I suppose given our past history of how routinely I would pry open his jaws to massage his gums, then run my finger along his sharp, serried molars, those 12 incisors, rub up and down both fangs between forefinger and thumb, then for luck tap the tips of both as I made to take leave of that warm portal and carry my attentions elsewhere, first stroking his flanks, then, discreetly, his belly, and tickling behind both his ears ...”

“... It was a fortnight before le couple coiffure turned up for the high season.A small flat her tante in Paris owned and let to the couple every year,and for many years. They were not young. Mlle’s discomfort was evidentfrom the moment they stepped off the bus that night, as if she found himunworthy somehow of such a gift as a free flat in St Tropez, or her, or both,or perhaps a general peevishness had seeped in during the long journey down ...”

“... Toys The janitor washing the blackboard in Mrs Turnaud’s class February night not too far from the border with Vermont snowless, and still a little stoned thinks he caught a patch of aurora borealis out the window or maybe just a headlight off a cloud      * Thank you for kissing me just then It was getting to be rather a swarm in there with the tendrils, suckers and shoots no purpose, no end in sight syntax a lost dynasty      * That child is in terror terror of himself You can tell by his face how it’s wrong in three parts and with a helmet of busy bruised air framing it the parents, insensible, walk chattering behind He’s going to hurt himself He’s going to hurt himself, soon      * Look at the coloured liquids and string beans in a jar, pickled the carved mahogany sideboard so old and so dark, like Europe      * The gaunt timpanist with the visiting symphony orchestra sits by himself on a concrete bench in the abandoned pedestrian mall Sunday with dead oak and maple leaves skittering past in this lovely provincial city renowned for its love of the arts      * She’s a drunkard but still pretty fortyish, oddly athletic The sidewalk might as well be the top of a sawhorse she walks so daintily with her pint in a small brown bag when suddenly a terrific boom ripples across the sky overhead, brilliant afternoon It’s the celebrated Blue Angels rocketing east to west in their Tomcat fighters nearly on top of each other tight diamond formation their contrails feathering behind come apart and vanish into sky      * The hobbyist in his room, alone under the blue turret his work of many years now done each row of matchsticks flawlessly joined, canted, plumb the fading smell of epoxy Someone Named Gutierrez: A Dream, A Western Outside the cantina with you in the back seat of a ruined DeSoto, torn upholstery, vinyl mange and the big old radio’s static frying what could only be a Dixie Cups tune ...”

“... Odd, unsettling somehow, visiting here again after so many years, travelling through town at this hour, the Baixa nearly deserted, then along the river, the lights of the bridge blurred by rain, just me and the Consul’s driver: customised Citroën C4 Aircross Picasso, outsized smoked-glass windows, upholstered like the inside of a leather queen’s crypt, brown Bavarian bull hide ...”

“... Windshield wipers slapping back and forth, Murph’s Celebrity SedanHugged the curve as it sped onto the Edison Bridge, Super 88 four barrelHigh Compression 394 Rocket V8, Roto Hydro-matic transmission, Power Steering,Pedal-eeze Power Brakes, the rolling black cylinder speedometerFlashing green, yellow and red, holding steady at 65 mph, midnight blue frameEncasing me in terror, where I remain still, sleeping or awakeWhen I conjure that ride across that old deck plate and girder bridgeWith its big hump in the middle, all 29 spans, the muddy Raritan 135 feet below,Murph’s foot to the floor as he wove through the pack, growlingImprecations, outraged by the pace of the rest of the world, franticTo get nowhere in particular except in the early a ...”

“... Shadow Man Shadow man’s still there, his back to it all, huddled over the picnic table, even after Halloween, after the first big December rain, the pre-Christmas all day Church&Baseball Posada,mariachi trumpet, impassioned orators:GOD LOVES BASEBALL. GOD LOVES YOU. Still there, under the sycamores, big dun leaves plastering the basketball court, staring, as he does, at nothing ...”

“... Per le donne famiglia Paciotto-Piernera & Jeff-e The beauty – the way the swallows gather around the Duomo for a few moments at dusk then scatter, darting away across the Vale with its checkerboard pastels dissolving into smoke along with the hills beyond. We saw it that one time from the Maestro’s apartments, through a little oval window above the piazza while that awful American baritone – what’s his name – was mauling the love duet with Poppea at the end, and she so wickedly angelic, a Veronese angel ...”

“... The Bench What passed through your mind, old man, what passed through your mind back then, staring out beyond the shingle and sea wrack, the islets and rocks, to the Olympics on the far shore, snowy peaks poking through cloud? I would spot you often on this bench, smoking your unfiltered Players, gazing into the distance, reading the grain of the sea, the currents and wind, as if parsing the whorls of Eadfrith’s Gospels ...”

“... On a 700-foot-thick shelf of Cretaceous pink sandstone Nel mezzo … Sixth floor, turn right at the elevator ‘The hotel of the century’ Elegant dining, dancing, solarium Around the block from the Black Hills School of Beauty And campaign headquarters of one Jack Billion (‘Together we can move forward’) The exact centre of the Oglala known universe Cante wamakoguake Or only 30 miles or so away, south-west, off Highway 87 I waken to the sound of the DM&E Rattling through this sleeping town Sounding its horn as it snakes its way through Hauling coal from nowhere, through nowhere, and then some Old rocks and distance, a few hawks overhead 4 a ...”

“... Exiles I The Super Chief speeds across the American West. Herr Doktor Doktor Von Geist pulls the ends of his moustache, almost like a seabird manoeuvring his wings in unsettled weather, while he gazes out at the desolation and tumbleweed – the echo-less-ness, as that bore Krenek likes to put it – moon drifting in and out of the clouds. With a formal solemnity, confused, perhaps with dignity, along with the deliberateness of a surgeon, he runs his fork through the orange emulsion covering his salad,        or what they call here salad ...”

“... In​  The Orchid Boat, the most recent of his more than 25 collections, Lee Harwood lights out from his seaside eyrie in Hove to many places, real, dreamed of or imagined: New Zealand, north-east India (‘where the Khasi people still sing some/hymns in Welsh’), fourth-century Alexandria, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, 15th-century Constantinople, Bologna in 1992, Amiens during the First World War, the T’ien-t’ai Mountains in China, the Rhinog mountains in Snowdonia, the beach at Harlech ...”

“... In June​ 2002, Tom Pickard moved into a cramped attic in the Hartside Café in Cumbria, perched on Fiends Fell, six miles from Alston, where Pickard had been living. The café sits at the high point of the road between Penrith and Alston, one of the few trans-Pennine roads. At just below two thousand feet it was the highest café in England, and felt like the windiest ...”

“... down the slopes of Corona Heights, Twin Peaks, Tank Hill – my name on everyone’s lips: – August, they say, with resignation and dismay, pulling up their collars against the wind. [Blue] The student doctors in blue scrubs, passing up and down Parnassus to the hospital, now invisible, on top of the hill, past the bougainvilleas and kebab shop: 18, 30 ...”

“... Epistle VIII It’s simply untrue, Maecenas, that I do not care for nature. A vile canard: I do, but not unadorned. I need architecture, streets, and, not least, the human form, to frame, contrast and ornament. A birch among a sea of birches does not enchant. Rather, give me a birch, say, over there in the moonlight, to the left of the belvedere, by itself or part of a small stand, with ample space around to show off its charms to advantage ...”