Still Life with Carrots
When I discover a carrot, like this one,
grown old, forgotten on a shelf
behind bottles of oil, herbs and spices,
all those nouveaux arrivés, I feel myself
drawn to it. It’s as if all
the wonderful meals my life has been made of,
the exotic tables at which I have sat
had never existed, as if during love-
making a former lover had come
into my mind, or a neighbour, long dead
had knocked on the door and let himself in,
as of old, trailing the earth from his grave.
The politeness accosts me. Almost as frail
as my father in his hospital bed
those last long months, this carrot seems
to have something to tell me. The fact is, in the end,
the formidable weakens, the once proud
become stooped and sad. The lost
no longer recognise themselves.
And so it goes for all our vegetable loves:
the pea dries up; the tomato weeps
and weeps an ectoplasmic mess;
lettuce browns like an old book;
potatoes send up flares of distress;
but carrots just age there, waiting to be found,
as the plates on the table, like the planets, go around.
A Natural History of Armed Conflict
The wood of the yew
made the bow. And the arrow.
And the grave-side shade.
The Engine
With a four-sided aluminium key
and one hand clamped around the wheels
to hold them still, I hold my breath
and wind the engine of the small grey train.
I am five or six years old and I wind
for the soft creaking of the spring,
for the pull of these four small wheels
like the heart-throb of some living thing.
Later when I carve my name in wood
or later again stub out cigarettes
it will be with this same motion, but for now
I wind to be here, beside myself,
and with the last possible, last permissible turn
to release the perfect single ping
then watch as the engine heads out with the news,
a thing beyond me, a thing singing.
