New Poems

Congratulations to Kelly Bianchi on her appointment as Portsmouth's First Poet Laureate, http://www.port.ac.uk/aboutus/newsandevents/frontpagenews/title,123640,en.html .
It looks as if enthusiasm for the job won't be a problem for her and I look forward to seeing how it goes.
Output from me is inevitably more frugal and a feeling that one is well out of form, and that things aren't matching up to one's hoped for standard, mean that one can hardly expect others to be excited about what I've written if I'm not excited myself. Nevertheless, I do keep trying and am happy to share these two recent efforts just in case they're not so bad.
But, with it being March, it will shortly be time to give my preview of the Cheltenham (horse racing) Festival, which is one of the highlights of this website's year and of the sporting calendar. I'll be hoping to help you towards a monetary profit but if not that then perhaps an entertaining week's sport.
In the meantime, at least I'm not taking up the valuable time of poetry editors with these pieces and they're not doing too much harm here,


Twilight

II

We’d have missed if we’d not been there
how the last light gave the water
such a deep corundum colour
that an Emperor would look fine in
or the clouds were edged with grandeur
from another world, less faded
than the transient one we walked through
while the town strewn on the far shore
sent its monotonous signals
ever brighter through the sharp air,
so watched moments, knowing how fast
such celestial things are changing,
because sometimes you look away
and then look back to find them gone.



Under London

First, I am above the river
that’s chasing bits of itself
under famously-named bridges,
full of history and sorrow,
keeping secret horror stories
in its muddy subconscious flow.
But then I, too, hide from the light
and hope, using the Oyster card
I treat as a fashion item,
I look as if I’m used to it
and not just hoping for the best
like a provincial ingénue.
For this is where fashion comes from
and I am somewhat out of place
where it’s all made out of money
or a gradual desperation
where brief beauty is contingent
and, if not captured, is gone.

One day there’ll be so much darkness,
more than has ever been thought of,
so for now I’ll praise the light
that comes back from the tube train window
where there is some wild Ludmila,
on her way to some assignation,
checking her reflection in it.