‘The leaves tremble to your tune’: These poems ask enduring questions about mortality and meaning
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Playtime
And what do we foretell
of the kids beneath these high windows?
Through all the goings on a stab
right out of Bruegel’s Children’s Games:
“Can I play with you?” and feet
after a painted tyre
faltering: “Let me also play…?”
The world has come to a standstill.
The evening birds that oversee the play-space
are silenced. Like psephologists
at the time of a big verdict
we glance obliquely at a cluttered scene
and smile uncertainty aside.
Fat Cat
This cat is low-slung
with a belly full of bombs.
It was beneath the car
and has made it to the undergrowth
where all you see is a tail twitching
as if it were a tiger.
But this is no make believe:
its payload is real
and deadly. A matter of moments
in wariness
for populations to explode.
To A Rich Young Girl
It feels so good to her
the tug on her waist-length hair
being brushed as she stands in the garden
her eyes shut to the early
filter of sun as her head
is gently rocked with each
downward stroke it feels
so good
and with translucence
warming her eyelids and birdsong
turning on the sky
the universe is hers
to toy with where she stands.
The Pencil
Prospectives prowl the corridor
to sniff out whether one day that towel askew
could be their child’s.
They are meeting here for the first time
like tourists on a conducted tour
in a coach with meshed windows.
Their voices merge then separate
tinged with nervous wonder...