1 Rain & rain from the west and the clouds in the shape. Man walks in. Crows circle. To sky, muttering, didicoy. Lays his feet in the rain. Tar paper peeling & waters form. (His) piss blades. Stains the bramble hedge. Crawls through doors. Feathers fall over. His black suit. Lies inside. Singing; his dark song. In his heart he. Lifts the car off the farmer and ran. Tossed his bike in the hedge & wrestles a man down. Ate the flowers with his bare hands. Where you from boy ? He says he comes. Says he comes from the borders, boy. He says he comes from Eardisley. Where you from, boy ? Where you from ?         2 Breathes in the dry lights & dries him. Aspires Towards dark. All the quick animals. The angry the secretive ones. What are their nakes? (What are their) marks?         3 When he stood up he knocked him back down and the cold. All night in the lane in the hedgerow lays. Drinking. His breath it comes out of the man like in sheets, like. Water frozen inside inside the boots. Sees starlings take sustenance from the earth and circle. Black things come. Before the eyes. (Walked for days.) They cuts the small tree and they lay it down. In a line. Like a cut to the neck, half across. So the thing lives and clean. So it flowers. Birds inside too sometimes men. Found a man inside once sleeping. With snow on. Feels the poplar with his teeth, and the birch. Makes its paper sweet. Where the tongue &. Black branches drip. Water percolates in. Singing. The clear night is in. Stars burn. & waters burn. Watches the light behind the eyes. Comes into us. Sleep. The Animals sleep. Sucking it down through a straw. The animals sleep. Dies. Every time. Makes a hedgerow, thus.         6 I lie in the fields and watch. The grasshoppers grass. Tobacco the tail makes. Bitter on the tongue. The clouds make a dog's face. France. An old man with a pipe. Split grass in the fingers and blew. An acorn cup. Whistles with the fingers inside. Owl sounds. And steeple. High I and its echo. Inside & around (in) the field I sing. How many things ? One day lay there and saw ghosts wrapped round the house. Like wool. Sometimes one memory. Sometimes a string.         7 She woke early & feed the child. Warmed her hands over the ring and light up. Looks out the window at the gorse and small buildings. Peed and feels its heat rise then back to the kitchen (her) heels squeak. Feed the child, Chiron the Healer. Virgo's, no, Sagittarius's sign. Lived in a cave and could not die. Had the power to heal others & knew salves and herbal lore. Administered to all who sought but could not heal himself. Finally died to allow Prometheus entry into heaven. She feed the child, plastic bottle on the plastic table. Robins fight off their partners & keep their territory. Sparrows. These warring birds. Must be lying a couple of hours there and before. Train miles up the track. How we lay pennies on the rail to stretch them see. So she must be down here. The paper says so. Because of the planets it was. Venus with Pluto and so. Hair blowing back down the tracks. Walking into our face. The paper says it says. She blows into her hands to keep them warm, this morning, to keep them warm. The birds in the tunnel. Forget how to sing. Fly straight in and don't come back out again. Black birds, brown birds, red ones. Sleep in the roofs and eat smoke. From the old trains from Ledbury. Where the queen sleeps. Victoria in a bath chair. Only I remember her. This day. The day she died in. To allow Prometheus to allow. Because of Pluto and Venus. Pluto. Venus. Who ? Who ? The day she died in. Who? Who ? What ?         8 In the pond skimmers' waters. They go down. Comes round the wrists then the cold eats you there, like the truth she said, Consumes you. Spring waiting. Summer rolls off the water and it comes it comes. Into the fields. Made only for eyes. In the eddies of water where. In the gaps between atoms. Walk with the day's eye from daisy where. Water in the woods. Breaking. Wearing the feather shirt. Once eating the birds words, mocking them. Cuckoo, foxglove, pussywillow, cuckoo spit. Unfolded my sex there, with questions. Beneath this tree. Mapped the stars with my guide with. My silver ring. Mould around the tiles. This plastic thing. Sun turns the worlds yellow. When we shoot. The birds fall. Thunderflies line the shelf. Like black indians. My secrets are.         9 Opens the door and the catch pops. Then reaches in for the key. The left hand reaching in. Told me the thumb nail was broken by a bailing machine we seen in a museum - that nobody knows. Reaches in for the key and finds the key. Feels the cold brass on the fingers ball. The brass shaft and flat teeth of course. In the shape of a crown. Holds the key out and down. Finds the hole in the face in the dark and its ticking tick. Puts it in.         10 Life is boundless. Sun. (Was) In this barn where. Where the night. Where the night lifts itself up & becomes, becomes a sad thing that walks walks like Jesus. Like Jesus in the fields. He places his hand on the machine and the night &. Is not wanted there. Night will be filled now without him. This machine. Where we were climbed there and her skin was all off & the flowers inside. Breathed in what & out silver. Pollen. Hay-seed. Smeared the dust in our lungs. Paints it all in. Before there was no air there. Inside. Inside night's clover. Beauty is. (But) it comes there. Swifts circle the owl's house. But the owl is. Let down. If you break open her pellets, she reveals. Fieldmice, shrews. Voles even are buried there. In her eyes. So we walk and the dirt road ends there. Suddenly. Why she stops and she cries. Beneath the purple eaves. Light escapes through the cracks. To be lost there. Night lifts itself up and covers us until there is no air. The moon is so empty now. We have left us with nowhere to go. Kissing is. For good health wear bird's bones. In your clothes. When you see a falling star, say -         11 Exits without darkness, without light. When the horse chestnuts blossom in May. The clock comes to measure it by. Songs. Under the gate. Walking uphill at an angle. Were fatherless & so. Disappointment's cars. Bullets drift. Down from an open window. Hanging out. Burning sheets (that we) (sleep on) then crying all night. Entered her body. & came out the other side. This cry. Puddles of moisture around her arms. Salt. The memory of. Petals on the shelf. Beneath the sealed up window. Light falling from the tower. "It was." A passage through glass, through a season. "Look at this little earth." When the body drifts dies it flies. Flies to the mountain & it. It ascends the path of the stars. It ascends this path of stars called the Via Latica. (Called the) Milky Way. When the body. When the body dies it is. Gone in June. It is so cold there is even Cold in the dog. Gone in June.         12 Petals fall off the blossom then. (What mark to make of beauty?) Petals drop from the blossom and bloods come roses. It wakes up in the night and does not - Remember her name. "Tell me." "Tell me your name." "(He) calls me Brown." All the creatures of the air cannot take this away. Climbs up the cancer tree. Grows into the roots. & sun. Builds to a flame. Loves the water but fears it. Sleeps without dreams full. Salmon in the river, untaught. I [that] remember the teeth of your hair, sometimes.         15 Dandelions over the dark field darkness. Water hangs under. The lip of the bank the lip of the hills. Drinking it in. Thistles (break) between cows' teeth. River waits inside the stones singing. Waits it waits. O Kingfishers, it dreams of you. Black against the black river. She climbs the sky & walks there, summerlong. Sees the fields laid out beneath her sky. Circles the currents beneath her flanks. (They) buckle & ride. She is an engine a walking. Eating insects "on the wing". In flood pastures. The mist in her burns off in pockets. Burns off in the sun. (I will I will surely drift and slip away. In this light in this light in. This cold light. Down the Severn Avon, to Gloucester and on. Carrion. And on.) Found her body there, kingfisher, beneath the bank. In the dead the dead water. Will not write long after this for this night for this long.         16 The organs. Light falls. From the Comet Kohoetek. From Malvern. Stares into. The night sky. Pylons. Plates of rain.         25 A space ploughed up by the wind. (Acorn, Acker). A ripple or dark streak on the surface of water. (The same). Storm passing. (Following). Fires in the fields. Purple flowers – Called something. “Of all that is said in the world –” Is a volume. A distant city. Stole this from the ankle. & sent it.

Heart Hammer / Paris / 1995

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