There are shorter nights and longer that get shorter. Time eats itself. The books grow heavier yet briefer They pack your nights along the shelf until they’re read in night’s long bed.

He thought he was pig ignorant being a late starter, but that was not the argument, the pig was simply smarter. It made its case with greater grace even as it grunted, which was the grace he wanted.

Poetry in Aldeburgh committee poets, joined by guest George Szirtes, will be at the printroom on 15th September, reading work responding to Monica Petzal's exhibition, Indelible Marks: The Dresden Project, as well as selections from 2024 festival poets. printroom.studio

The Death of the Magician The magic he abjured came back to bite him - as it often does. His memory for spells was poor and not what it once was. Two flies in the room refused to settle. He could hear them buzz.

In history, death is detail. We’re constantly making history. History is now. We made it yesterday so it might be today. The dead we tread on are mere history, the book of which is long lost but remains as new.

Three boys at night, drunk, have lost someone, shout his name then move on. The shout hangs in the dark street then slowly begins to die. We were here, it says, insistent, absent, and the night moves on, silent and naked, dreaming the shout, and the boys.

Rabelaisan god, drowning in his own swill, Lamb is the laws of chance liberated to run countries and the whole globe. Like all gods, he’s deaf to the sound of time and cannot hear it. He wakes as the world wakes, slumped, his mouth washed right out.

Suddenly Now that summer’s gone suddenly slamming the door behind it, the draught grows keener, the wind stronger, so it hurls itself against walls and gates as if it had meant to hurt something beyond hurt. Then the mellowness sets in. Pears, wet grass.

I'm going to release this on Saturday on the Salt website. It is unforgettable. You will love it.

drawn to rust

How heavily night falls and lands. Is it the season tumbling like dead leaves, scurrying down streets into gutters? Is it time breaking into small dark pieces? Maybe the wind is eating itself with sharp teeth of frost biting at wet trees.

Ely. The cathedral almost bleached in the autumn sunlight. Like a hymn sung softly in the distance.

Ely Cathedral is shrouded in its own light which is barely light more an effulgence spouted from its spires, like steam from a locomotive in motion. But where is it going? To heaven, sing the angels who keep clapping their stone wings.

Children’s games In a vast playground in the enormous city children play games they have invented out of improvisations on their own childhood which is endless. Games spin round them like new planets revolving round suns like dust in bright eyes.

Some have winding stairs as if into the corners of themselves. They dream of falling and talk to whoever hears. The stairs they climb are steep, wet and precipitous right to the landing. But there’s no landing just the deep stairwell.

When the long days end and there is impatience for leaves to fall and swirl, you want to catch light just before it vanishes in a last gesture, a whim, a whisper, a whiteness dropping away into memory like your own pale face.

Off to Pushkin House to take part in an evening of Apollinaire and Khlebnikov. Should be fun and joy.

Such a stillness here in the empty carriage. Wind blowing hard outside, the mass of dark cloud shifting slowly like a mood reluctant to lift. The heart finds itself all but deserted. Where are the frivolities of light, the sharp rains?