MERCER SIMPSON
                     from Enclosures and Disclosures
                     
                     
                     A Cricketer’s Autobiography
                     
                     
                     Seeing the ball late 
                     of necessity a back-foot player 
                     tied to the crease, accumulating singles 
                     by cuts and glances, such deflections 
                     often accidental snicks off the edge, 
                     his skills were limited. Once out, that’s it, 
                     no getting back and trying once again. 
                     Cricket’s a paradigm for life, 
                     the sudden ending to the innings, 
                     dismissal unexpected. It’s all too soon 
                     and not enough’s been done, 
                     the scoring chances missed. 
                     Bad light will soon stop play. 
                     The sun is going down 
                     in rainy night-clouds 
                     behind the locked pavilion.
                     
                     
                     Honest to God 
                     
                     
                     Dear God 
                     I hope I’ve got 
                     your correct address: 
                     with so much mail 
                     going astray these days 
                     I wouldn’t want this letter 
                     to get lost in the post. 
                     I hope you don’t mind me 
                     leaving the writing of it rather late 
                     but I felt I had to write to thank you 
                     for letting me stay in your house 
                     for so long. I know 
                     I haven’t been the easiest of guests, 
                     stealing your son’s bread 
                     and helping myself to his wine. 
                     Please forgive your wayward visitor 
                     straying into the intellectual thickets 
                     of unbelief, of spurious questionings, 
                     trespasser from faith’s footpaths 
                     exploring country lanes I thought 
                     were beckoning me to Eden 
                     which I should have known to be 
                     forbidden territory. 
                     Now that my time is nearly over
                     I insist on having the last word 
                     which must be gratitude: 
                     gratitude for the miracle of your world 
                     that I, who might have died at birth, 
                     was spared to live in; 
                     for which I offer you my thanks 
                     which can never be enough 
                     for the gift of life. 
                     So please forgive me if I seem 
                     impertinent in asking if I may 
                     come back and visit you again some time? 

                     
                     JUDI BENSON
                     from THE THIN PLACES
                     
                     
                     Aftermaths
                     
                     If we could just find the missing letters of the alphabet
                      Ken Smith, June 2003
                     
                     1.
                     
                     Months I’ve spent re-arranging all alphabets,
                     wondering what you meant, and then what.
                     
                     Weeks I’ve chased gromits of dust,
                     weeding out old pronouns, doing basic maths.
                     
                     2-1 = 1, though feels closer to 0 much of the time.
                     We-you = I. Our reduces to mine.
                     
                     The us is only me and you is always singular.
                     The future is as it always was,
                     
                     unknown, but for the certainty now,
                     that we won’t be together.
                     
                     If I keep on subtracting, soon one shoe will do, half a mirror,                      
                     half a mind, the other half of the conversation gone.
                     
                     2.
                     
                     and so the blackbird’s song goes on,
                     as things seem to, even without you.
                     
                     April again, Ash Wednesday, an airplane lazy circling 
                     for landing through afternoon’s yellow-pink sky.
                     
                     Door slam.
                     
                     What can I tell you. The light in the refridgerator
                     goes out without you.
                     
                     Your side of the bed, such a hole I fill it,
                     newspapers, letters, scribblings like these.
                     
                     The world’s killing itself still.
                     Everything runs out, though we haven’t yet.
                     
                     Rain. Two weeks solid and still the resevoirs are half empty.
                     Not flushing the loo hasn’t helped all that much.
                     
                     Tearing my biodegradeable self into pieces,
                     hasn’t helped either.
                     
                     The mice are still, if not absent. Gone next door.
                     Whisperings through the Russian vine, do you have, we do...
                     
                     The Bleeding Heart’s blooming again
                     from the nothing winter made of me.
                     
                     And the sea, I hasten to add, is still sea-ing.
                     I, still adjusting my breathing to its tides, in and out.
                     
                     Wish you were here, goes without saying,
                     and the saying goes without reaching you, or not.
                     
                     Twilight still is the betwixing hour for me,
                     light on its way to dark,
                     
                     my face and thoughts
                     sinking into shadows.
                     
                     3.
                     
                     For once I’ve got the plot,
                     number 201-9. Harry Goldberg’s number 10.
                     You’re number 8. Manor Park,
                     woodland on its way to becoming more so.
                     The story ends as all do,
                     with death. The End.
                     I’m just not sure when or how
                     I’ll get there, or what kind of tree to have planted.
                     Yours is Hawthorn.
                     I wonder what Wild Mountain Ash is like.
                     And in so wondering, the story continues.
                     
                     
                     WENDY FRENCH
                     from SPLINTERING THE DARK
                     
                     
                     The Therapist Talks Back
                     
                     
                     Talking to you is like screwing down a coffin lid
                     or carrying water in cupped hands 
                     across the desert. I’ve never known you not to cheat
                     but face to face you never tell a lie, and this 
                     
                     is like carrying water in cupped hands.
                     That’s how hard it was to try and reach you
                     but face to face you never tell a lie.
                     You just hid the tablets till we were out of sight. 
                     
                     That’s how hard it was to try and reach you.
                     If you’d survived the weekend it would have been all right.                      
                     You just hid the tablets till we were out of sight.
                     In the ambulance you’d asked if you were going to die. 
                     
                     If you’d survived the weekend it would have been all right.
                     A nurse telephoned to say that she’d been with you when you                      died.
                     In the ambulance you’d asked if you were going to die. 
                     In our last session you’d seemed to want to live. 
                     
                     A nurse telephoned to say that she’d been with you when you                      died.
                     Across the desert I’ve never known you not to cheat.
                     In our last session you’d seemed to want to live. 
                     Talking to you is like screwing down a coffin lid. 
                     
                     
                     Sunflowers 
                     
                     yes many and beautiful things  
                     (Sappho, Fragment 24)
                     
                     It is three o’clock on Thursday seventh of August
                     a sultry heat that dusts the streets with litter – 
                     an unrelenting dryness in the air. I pass a flower-seller
                     sitting on the step, sunflowers from Israel 
                     fold down into a steel bucket
                     and then I pause at Van Gogh’s sunflowers 
                     newly painted on the outside wall. 
                     
                     Entering the gallery, long corridors protect us
                     with paintings from unlived centuries 
                     and I find a map to read the way to sunflowers
                     which dominate and bloom. Outside, I will buy
                     the sunflowers on offer rather than a postcard 
                     for by morning when they’ve drooped and died
                     pollen stains will remain ground into my hearth. 
                     

                     MAHMUD KIANUSH
                     from THROUGH THE WINDOW OF TAJ MAHAL
                     
                     Peacock
                     
                     The sun was a strong father for you,
                     And the earth,
                     With the mind of the sun,
                     And the wakeful breath of the air,
                     A loving mother.
                     
                     I am also your brother,
                     But have not enjoyed a good share
                     Of their strength and love,
                     And this has filled me
                     With despair and agony.
                     
                     Now your colourful apparel
                     Adorns my room:
                     Tell them that the imperfect brother
                     Has become an enemy
                     So that they may change your guise.  
                     
                     
                     from OF BIRDS AND MEN: POEMS FROM A PERSIAN DIVAN
                     
                     A Drop of Dew
                     
                     A drop of dew
                     Glimmering
                     With the colour of its base
                     In the silvery light of dawn
                     Can remind us 
                     Of many, many things:
                     Its appearances depend
                     On who, 
                     where,
                     and
                     In what mood we are.
                     
                     
                     In the silvery light of dawn,
                     Following the night
                     When Hypocrite the Tyrannous,
                     In a godforsaken land,
                     Charged a young sceptic
                     With blasphemy
                     And sent him to the firing squad,
                     This drop of dew,
                     Is a sea of sacred blood
                     In which are reflected
                     The forgotten, glorious faces
                     Of all who have been killed
                     Since the beginning of Thought
                     Only because they wanted to say:
                     
                     
                     “I love freedom!
                     I have my own Ideas,
                     And my own Ideals!
                     I also am the Truth!”
                     
                     
                     But a drop of dew
                     On a rose petal,
                     Or a green leaf,
                     Or an apple blossom,
                     Or anything else,
                     In the silvery light of dawn,
                     For a little bird
                     Is always only
                     A drop of water:
                     The awakening drink of the day.
                     
                     
                     Love in Bosnia
                     
                     Soon the chicks will fly,
                     And will no more remember their mother,
                     Who will no more remember her chicks.
                     
                     A grace or a curse,
                     I can never forget
                     Whatever has happened on earth,
                     Not even the loneliness of God
                     Before the creation of Man,
                     Let alone the Bosnian girl
                     Who hanged herself today
                     On the kindest branch of a tree,
                     On her way to Despair,
                     Out of the cruel, treacherous Hope.
                     
                     I wonder whether
                     It was before
                     Or after being raped
                     By a lost soldier,
                     When on Death she bestowed
                     Her whole virgin Love!
                     
                     
                     Travellers
                     
                     
                     Happy are the birds
                     For they always live
                     As travellers.
                     
                     At international airports
                     People naturally forget
                     The conflicts of their beliefs,
                     And peace returns to their hearts,
                     Because in their minds
                     They are all travellers:
                     Only there and then
                     They do not belong
                     To illusions.