I

Winter Encounters

House and hollow; village and valley-side:
The ceaseless pairings, the interchange
In which the properties are constant
Resumes its winter starkness. The hedges’ barbs
Are bared. Lengthened shadows
Intersecting, the fields seem parcelled smaller
As if by hedgerow within hedgerow. Meshed
Into neighbourhood by such shifting ties,
The house reposes, squarely upon its acre
Yet with softened angles, the responsive stone
Changeful beneath the changing light:
There is a riding-forth, a voyage impending
In this ruffled air, where all moves
Towards encounter. Inanimate or human,
The distinction fails in these brisk exchanges—
Say, merely, that the roof greets the cloud,
Or by the wall, sheltering its knot of talkers,
Encounter enacts itself in the conversation
On customary subjects, where the mind
May lean at ease, weighing the prospect
Of another’s presence. Rain
And the probability of rain, tares
And their progress through a field of wheat—
These…

Ghazal

is the Human Rights Act in the desert Inshallah
are Freedom of Speech and Equal Ops
curlews in the crazy desert Inshallah

repetition of treasures in the Congo
repetition of bobble heads across poppy valleys

does the Kaaba glow on the road to Raqqa Inshallah
what swollen pass must these sandals tread
for the scar of Jerusalem Inshallah

repetition of warriors on the Screen of Thrills repetition
where I’m swung in love with a gun aboard my back

who has taken my house and eats my bread Inshallah
who takes the pen from the head so its flesh
harden to a vessel of God in muezzin cry Inshallah

repetition of robots in the sky repetition of babies blown
like dolls in a market repetition of fresh torn martyrs

why are my daughters in the desert O Inshallah
for the theft of the word where one man’s Allah
is beheaded…