Casina Poems
Eight poems I wrote at Casina del Fiume, Ansina (AR), Italy between 2006 and 2010.
A BARGAIN
On the rail in a Siennese thrift shop,
a jacket in eng-lit-don corduroy,
green as envy, innocence, bottle-glass.
I'd sought the perfect one for years,
and at last this fitted like the proverbial glove.
No price tag visible but
in the bath that night
I found one stuck to the nape of my neck
like a sticking plaster: €22.50
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IN THE BLOOD
"Poets continue to be born not made and cannot, I'm afraid, be predetermined."
[Wallace Stevens, Harvard Lecture 1936.]
Slim consolation.
Make yourself a poet by awful up-hill slog
only to feel the wind of some young shit
who was born to it
sprinting past,
scattering your sweatdrops
in his slipstream.
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FAST FOOD
I left my leopard in Leominster and my toaster in Towcester,
no more toasted leopard chez nous for a while...
And I'm told that in Eyam
they've quite deserted the old English syllabub.
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NOT ANGELS BUT ANGLES
Mr Pickering taught us that
"The
Angle
of
Incidence
is equal
to the
Angle
of
Reflection"
(perhaps he hoped to make us his mirrors)
But such an angular truth hardly explains
these burning
diamonds,
topaz, amethysts,
emeralds
sent skittering by the sun
across the wind-whipped surface of our diga.
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EXPLETIVES INSERTED
Damn blast fuck shit bollox
I seem to have mislaid my metre meter again.
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CREPUSCULE WITH M
A liquid golden light drips onto the green fleece of our hill
As if the air had turned to honey
or a treacly muscat wine.
Only the mad aerobatics of the swifts suggest
that this viscosity
is not in the air
but in my mind (and perhaps in yours?)
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AGRO-HAIKU
Amid the tobacco,
a fencing match - watery foils
swishing and swerving
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VULGAR THOUGHT ON MONTE NERONE GLIMPSED FROM PIETRALUNGA (A PORN-ODE )
The planet lies sprawled with her green furry legs apart
her great grey tits point to the sky.