From ‘At the Window’

How this pale dawn light floods in from the skyline.
How it seems almost at times to fail as if it might
fall back to midnight’s deep blue-black: as if it should.
I am given over to dreams that say what’s mine is mine.

I dreamt I was at this window and here I am:
not dreaming, or so I think, though something stays.
Dream has its flow, pain its own song to sing.

Rain sets a long graze on the glass. I know
nothing can come of this and this will pass.

*

My father is walking the boundary, lost and found
in death much as in life. He takes his time
on unfamiliar ground. He has his faithful wife
to hand: army-issue Lee-Enfield 4 Mk II, his wound

half-healed and open to the air. He’d like
to down the roosting birds in turn and hold
their corpses as they cool. What to repair his soul?

From first to last, cruelly used and cruel.
What to restore all that was filched from him and lost?

*

Sea-ice or lightplay? It gets to the door – or will, if not today.
Roar of a bull-seal stranded, cry of a red knot stranded.
Whatever was rare is dead. All else is set to fail.
Whistles and drums: armies of Armageddon nose to tail,

each acronym a blood-pact, each flag a shroud.
Hucksters work the slums: bring in death’s entr’acte
where the poor die drunk and laughing, where flesh for hire

goes broken to its bed, where children spew the air …
Lightplay as token. The skyline shrinks. The weather worsens.