Counting Backwards
Page 29
Cyclamen, blood-red 174
Dancing man 293
Dark, present, scattering night 95
Dead gull on Porthmeor 143
Death, hold out your arms for me 70
Decoding a night’s dreams 333
Dedication 60
Deep in busy lizzies and black iron 243
Dense slabs of braided-up lupins 343
Depot 170
Dis 88
Diving girl 216
Do they wake careless and warm 288
‘Doesn’t it look peaceful?’ someone said 133
Dolphins whistling 145
Domestic poem 400
Don’t count John among the dreams 128
Drink and the Devil 239
Driving along the motorway 138
Dropped yolks of shore-lamp quiver on tarmac 310
Dublin 1971 344
Dumb, his lips swathed 354
Everything changes to black and white 144
Fallen angel 153
Father, / I remember when you left us 261
February 12th 1994 53
Ferns on a hospital window 215
Festival of stone 42
First, the echo 213
First, the retreat of bees 173
Fishing beyond sunset 208
Five Versions from Catullus 59
Florence in permafrost 384
For all frozen things 328
For the length of time it takes a bruise to fade 127
For those who do not write poems 132
For three years I’ve been wary of deep water 364
Fortune-teller on Church Road 193
Four cormorants, one swan 51
From behind the curtain an open window 215
Frostbite 220
‘Fuck this staring paper and table 410
Getting into the car 137
Getting the Strap 247
Ghost at noon 227
Giraffes in Hull 167
Girl in the Blue Pool 52
Give me that red tub like a child’s drawing 79
Glad of these times 138
Gorse 151
Greek beads 228
Greenham Common 409
Harbinger 91
Hare in the snow 208
‘Has she gone then?’ they asked 346
He is the one you can count on 204
He lived next door all his life 205
He must stir himself. No more hiding 43
He takes the temperature of his heart 100
He wears a silver bell 108
He’s going on holiday to lonely 236
Hearing owls 160
Heimat 243
Her children look for her 56
Her fast asleep face turns from me 415
Here at my worktop, foil-wrapping a silver salmon 207
Here I am in the desert knowing nothing 244
Here is the bowl. Do I want it still 62
Here they are on the beach where the boy played 48
Here, where the old Industrial School was 37
Heron 308
Herring girl 282
Hold out your arms 70
Holiday to Lonely 236
Hornsea, 1952 41
How busy we are with the dead in their infancy 112
How cool the lovely bulb of your roundness 141
How hushed the sentence is this morning 196
How rangy they are, and lean, these leaves 206
How the sick body calms itself 315
Hungry Thames 224
I am the captainess of laundry 110
I can’t say why so many coffin-makers 198
I don’t need to go to the sun 29
I dreamed my love became a boat 157
I have a little sister, she has no breasts 54
I Have Been Thinking of You So Loudly 115
I have never known you easily 40
I Heard You Sing in the Dark 119
I hung up the sheets in moonlight 414
I imagine you sent back from Africa 356
I know that no one dare judge another’s need 209
I know them by their shoes 99
I lay and heard voices 273
I love it when you look at me like this 155
I love these flowers that lie in the dust 129
I never stop listening to you sing 217
I Owned a Woman Once 80
I remember years ago, that we had Christmas roses 355
I see the boys at the breakwater 296
I should like to be buried in a summer forest 212
I was in the kingdom of pointed raspberries 225
I was up and watching 102
I’d climbed the crab-apple in the wind 310
I’ve approached him since childhood 359
Ice coming 173
If I wanted totems, in place of the poles 264
If I were the moon 57
If no revolution come 412
If only 192
If you had said the words ‘to the forest’ 316
If you lie down at the Spit on this warm 49
If you were to reach up your hand 132
In a back garden I’m painting 397
In a wood near Turku 420
In Berber’s Ice Cream Parlour 314
In crack-haunted alleys, overhangs 125
In deep water 364
In memoriam Cyril Smith 1913-1945 359
In Praise of the Piano 22
In Rodmell Garden 396
In Secret 55
In such meadows the days pass 34
In the chemist’s at night-time 406
In the corded hollows of the wood 313
In the Desert Knowing Nothing 244
In the dusk of a forest chapel 358
In the goods yard the tracks are unmarked 389
In the tea house 383
In the tents 377
In the weightlessness of time and our passage within it 367
In the white sheets I gave you 249
‘Indeed we are all made from the dust of stars’ 140
Inside out 199
Inside the Wave 24
Is it Lethe or is it dock water? 109
‘It is finished,’ said Christ 175
It is the same electrical impulse as ever 78
It is your impulse I remember 155
It starts with breaking into the wood 278
It was not always a dry well 305
It was the green lorry with its greasy curtain 170
It was too hot, that was the argument 336
It was you I heard, your tiger pad on the stairs 197
It wears a smell of earth, not air 118
It’s evening on the river 308
It’s not the four-wheeled drive crawler 331
It’s past nine and breakfast is over 396
Its big red body ungulps 255
Jacketless, buckled, pressed from the voyage 64
Jacob’s drum 168
La Recouvrance 120
Lady Macduff and the primroses 365
Lambkin 344
Landscape from the Monet Exhibition at Cardiff 421
Later my stepson will uncover a five-inch live shell 329
Lazarus 354
Lead me with your cold, sure hand 233
Leave the door open 30
Lemon and stars 159
Lemon sole 273
Lemon tree in November 95
Let us think that we are pilgrims 349
Lethe 109
Life and death are in the hands of God she said 56
Litany 127
Little Ellie and the timeshare salesman 226
Little papoose 57
Long long I have looked for you 277
Longman English Series 82
Lutherans 317
Malta 348
Mary Shelley 367
May voyage 162
Melancholy at one A.M. 158
Mimosa 45
Missile launcher passing at night 386
Mr Lear’s ring 192
Music plays gently 229
My daughter as Penelope 35
My life’s stem was cut 31
My mind aches where I cannot touch it 158
My nephews with almond faces 408
My people 67
My sad descendants 373
My slim volume, polished almost to nothing 60
My train halts in the snowfilled station 423
Narcissi 144
Nature came to us abhorring sharp edges 115
Near Dawlish 415
Nearly May Day 297
Need 209
New crops 334
Newgate 89
Next door 204
Nightfall in the IKEA Kitchen 46
No matter how wide the snowfield 94
No one else remembers that room 53
No, not a demonstration 140
No, they won’t gather their white skirts 137
Not going to the forest 316
Now I write off a winter of growth 404
Now the snowdrop, the wood-anemone, the crocus 365
Now winter comes and I am half-asleep 224
O engines 334
O that old cinema of memory 169
O wintry ones, my sad descendants 373
Odysseus 132
Odysseus to Elpenor 26
Of course they’re dead, or this is a film 238
Off the West Pier 310
Off-script 140
‘Often they go just before dawn’ 161
Often when the bread tin is empty 424
Old Jeffery begins his night music 339
Old men with sticks and courteous greeting 100
Old warriors and women 185
Ollie and Charles at St Andrew’s Park 419
On circuit from Heptonstall Chapel 341
On drinking lime juice in September 315
On growing a black tulip 225
On his skin the stink 239
On looking through the handle of a cup 63
On not writing certain poems 291
On smooth buttercup fields 350
On the other side of the sky’s dark room 129
On the same posts each evening 111
On the white path at noon when the sun 227
One A.M. 158
One more for the beautiful table 343
One year he painted his front door yellow 205
One yellow chicken 309
Ophelia 157
Our day off, agreed by the wind 377
Our family, swimming again 306
Out of the Blue 165
Patrick at four years old on Bonfire Night 374
Patrick, I cannot write 401
Patrick I 401
Patrick II 402
Pedalo 251
Permafrost 328
Pharaoh’s daughter 399
Pianist, 103, 101
Picture Messages 108
Pictures of a Chinese nursery 398
Piers Plowman: The Crucifixion & Harrowing of Hell 175
Pilgrims 349
Plane tree outside Ward 78 28
Playing Her Pieces 100
Ploughing the roughlands 331
Plume 132
Pneumonia 149
Poem for December 28 408
Poem for hidden women 410
Poem in a Hotel 237
Poem on the Obliteration of 100,000 Iraqi Soldiers 245
Porpoise washed up on the beach 363
Preaching at Gwennap 340
Pressed in the soil’s black web, nursed by the rough 91
Prince Felipe Prospero (1657-1661) 108
Privacy of rain 292
Rain. A plump splash 292
Rapunzel 379
Re-opening the old mines 23
Refrigerator days 222
Restless, the pæony truss tosses about 327
Rim 62
Rinsing 313
Rubbing Down the Horse 241
Russian doll 283
Safe period 303
Sailing to Cuba 310
St Paul’s 407
Say we’re in a compartment at night 190
Scan at 8 weeks 250
Seal run 323
Second marriages 416
See this ’un here, this little bone needle 282
See, you have fallen asleep in spite of me 307
September Rain 68
Seven years old last birthday 35
Shadows of my mother against a wall 335
She comes close to perfection 191
She kept Uncle Will’s telegram 378
She swam to me smiling, her teeth 251
She’s next to nowhere, feeling no cold 216
Ships on brown water 186
Shutting the Gate 21
Sirmio 59
Sisters leaving before the dance 289
Skips 264
Skulking 99
Sleeveless 194
Small, polished shield-bearer 91
Small, silvery, slipping 228
Smoke 185
Snow Queen 277
Snowdrops, Mary’s tapers 349
Snug as a devil’s toenail embedded 199
So, how decisive a house is 400
Some swear by vinegar and some by newspaper 118
Sometimes in the rough garden of city spaces 211
Sometimes, but rarely, the ancestors 134
Spanish Irish 155
Sparrow 61
Speak to me in the only language 165
Spring of turf and thrift, tangle of fleece, sheep-shit 58
Step by step, holding the thread 121
Still as the water is 113
Still life with ironing 155
Subtraction 66
Such a connoisseur of borrowed light! 147
Surely it’s not too much to ask 148
Sweet pepper 307
Sylvette Scrubbing 260
Taken in Shadows 103
Tall ship hanging out at the horizon 284
Tea at Brandt’s 229
Ten Books 64
Terra Incognita 50
That dream when we were young 94
That lake lies along the shore 293
That morning when the potato tops rusted 246
That old cinema of memory 169
That violet-haired lady 275
That’s better, he says, he says 344
The air-blue gown 371
The apple fall 397
The argument 336
The bald glasshouses stretch here for miles 338
The Bare Leg 32
The bathers, where are they? 295
The Bike Lane 238
The blessing 200
The blue garden 133
The boy in the boat, the tip of the pole 208
The bride’s nights in a strange village 353
The butcher’s daughter 279
The Captainess of Laundry 110
The chink of hammers is a song 42
The coffin-makers 198
The conception 249
The cuckoo game 278
The damson 395
The dark fabric of night not torn 160
The dark, present, scattering night 96
The Day’s Umbrellas 111
The Deciphering 112
The deserted table 417
The Diving Reflex 256
The dream-life of priests 287
The dry glasshouse is almost empty 337
The dry well 305
The Duration 48
The father is a writer; the son 418
The Filament 121
The footfall 197
The form 195
The Gift 113
The grass looks different in another country 345
The greenfield ghost 281
The grey lilo 130
The halls are thronged, the grand staircase murmurous 200
The Halt 38
The hard-hearted husband 346<
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The haunting of Epworth 339
The horse landscape 375
The Hyacinths 91
The Inbox 78
The Kingdom of the Dead 116
The knight 358
The Lamplighter 37
The land pensions 332
The last day of the exhausted month 415
The Last Heartbeat 117
The long arm hangs flat to his lap 342
The Malarkey 75
The man on the roof 166
The man who gave little Ellie his forever 226
The mare with her short legs heavily mud-caked 341
The marshalling yard 389
The midwife whose omniscient hands 403
The night chemist 406
The Night Workers 92
The obvious story, my darling 88
The Old Mastery 117
The other babies were more bitter than you 402
The other side of the sky’s dark room 129
The Our Father, the moment of fear 247
The Overcoat 118
The panting of buses through caves of memory 170
The parachute packers 361
The peach house 337
The Place of Ordinary Souls 34
The plum tree 370
The point of not returning 194
The Polish husband 393
The potatoes come out of the earth bright 323
The Queue’s Essentially 110
The rain was falling down in slow pulses 336
The rain’s coming in 190
The room creaked like a pair of lungs 301
The rowan 135
The scattering 213
The schooner La Recouvrance is almost at the horizon now 120
The sea skater 382
The sea’s a featureless blaze 348
The sentence 196
The shaft 29
The Silent Man in Waterstones 265
The slowly moving river in summer 399
The Snowfield 94
The soft fields part in hedges, each 386
The spill 188
The stars come so close 159
The summer cabins are padlocked 422
The surgeon husband 207
The swans go up with slow wing-beats 51
The Tarn 113
The thing about a saddle is that second 241
The Torn Ship 102
The traffic halted 393
The tree outside the window 28
The Underworld 20
The Wardrobe Mistress 266
The wasp 224
The white receiver 250
The window swings and squeaks in the sun 392
The winter fairs are all over 420
The wood-pigeon rolls soft notes off its breast 335
The writer’s son 418
The Yellow Sky 246
Then I think how the train 263