Do not tarry for too many minutes below Chanctonbury’s decimated circle of silvered-skin beech trees They were planted without regard for any long-term fixing agreement set fast to grow by a man’s measures of water on their fragile root balls There on disturbed nights that dark copse is circled by foul-mouthed flying guides Above you...
The tin top cottages
should be haunted - but there is no ghost -
no made-pail Hoogstraten .../
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 .../
They say that there is a ghost
in every old house
That frigorific forms will rise
to meet with warm blood
and damp bones ...
My father died
aged fifty-five,
I was aged
twenty-three,
he slipped away
at St. Peter's
...