Up at five with the ghost
who is an hour ahead –
not one for the clock’s
change – she lets light in//
She leaves her stew of scent
on my stiff right fingers –
as if marking out extents
upon me// She squats
upon my vice-set thighs –
her other working of me//
See – this sheet is stained
and pocked by blood
once a month – it is she//
The tin top cottages
should be haunted – but there is no ghost –
no made-pail Hoogstraten –
A man ripped the roof
off his own propped home and so next door
was left for him – alone –
Now stand those twins
with no tiles or grace – rotting near Hoogstraten –
and his resting place
This bar’s serving hatch is always left agape –
tonight I see it is a varnished picture frame
holding unfair perspectives of the pirouettes
of the not-Degas barmaids in uniform black
In this pub’s cellar are floating phantasma –
I am often told – here under my pint-fixed feet –
below the boards – Orbital corner-of-the-eye
lights are known to cross the cold stones
They are – the old boys also claim –
fixed by the presence of the town’s tunnels –
those mislaid smugglers’ rat runs now
bricked up within the dead-end arches
Other spectres are regulars in the saloon –
they bother the rushed staff and punters
from their precarious stools – a feat in old age –
added up they would predate electricity –
and then they shuffle off – with chains of change –
shifting between the bogs and their tall thrones –
always back on their seat to summon spirits –
from the optics – but not with their pensions
Believe in your child’s ghost –
but then let her spectre run
from the road-kill shock –
from the flare of the
body-struck headlights –
those halogen matches
will ignite her terrified flight
into the woods –
But don’t eye that place
where she first learns to haunt
in the permanent night
of tightly weaved birches –
where Nan Tuck flies afeard
of her burning death throws –
where the recently
spilt spirit runs
from the quick-kill road –
Who let the trees take the young
from our arms?
The wounding country lanes
kill our flightless birds
with too much winding speed –
She will be cold tonight
We dropped over Falmer
and sped past a man in white
who was bent-double
among the weighted hedges
The descent past the stadium
was a collision of thoughts –
it then offered a roundabout
and we doubled back to offer
I rehearsed my approach
reminding myself of the place
and how I would have to slow
with hazards
with a wound window
But there was no man in white
in the place
only the waving of branches
under the charge of turbulence
No one on the untrod grass
