Bus note 47

Some very drunk old gents.
Like boys. Almost dapper.
        One FUCK shouted
        over everybody's edgy nerves.
A little girl echoes that starred word
ad infinitum.
        Unstoppable play.
Baby scratches on civil skin.

Moel Siabod

Peat marsh: an extent

the irregular beat threads
and spreads out under foot

What is it there?
That old mud and sleepy oil

The secrets
against clocks
crackle

Rot yellow grass
burnt pieces
of far away

Sheep shit
rounded in
small beauty clusters

The incorrect trees
happen barely

and the stones clicking low
are almost forever

How the skin of lake mid way freezes!

one blurry
curving line

There were once small fires
in Quarrymen's barracks

Now the ravens
intimate here
flying and hidden
kissing behind rocks

upside down darkness
jagged     feathered

no warning cawing
but talking with each other
coming nearer

They were as blacke 
as they might be

South east spur
path markers lost
burning
steel
snow

Our human foreignness coats

The summit we didn't make
leaving us

True animals now skirting
and delighting

Scrambling down with
gloved hands in the snow


This poem is in many places dependent on the observations of the Wooden Girl. Often, she looks and delights while I march ahead or the camera organises my vision. The scene is Moel Siabod, the Mountain (I will call it a mountain) that can be seen in last week's photographs.

This post is for

Bus note 46

        Big man with four wheel suitcase
(what does he keep in there?),
        grey backwards baseball cap
        wrapped with folded lilac bandanna,
        psychedelic kerchief round the neck,
        yellow Lakers shirt
        and glittering visor shades.
Body moving as the way through.
        Clothing and gait as assertion
in a world of unthinking assent.
        All else
        gets shrunk
        in here.

The footpath to Moel Siabod

In the sixth and seventh photographs you can see the remains of the Quarrymen's barracks. The rockfaces are scarred by their work in a number of places (that vast pile of abandoned slate is theirs); these scars show up as part of nature's scene now.

Bus note 45

Priory School: boy and girl
won't listen to their Nanny,
        climbing over each other,
        playing and hurting.
Girl (about 6) mimics
the mitteleuropäische voice:
"Listen to me! Listen to me!"
        Strata are gleaming.
The air tastes of battery acid.
Money spells are thick here
        with the first deal
        long since done.
     

Rehearsal (Ein Deutsches Requiem)

  Blue slatted   green    blue-green    eking

all tucked in        see through pieces

Imagine the trees outside
by looking at them

     "...die Blumen abgefallen."

        ageing
        new
        pages
        turning
        noise

  Years ago, the tenors held
     hairpins gaping

           grass flesh
               blades in lungs
             long breaths

     "Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt."

God being
here in place
with burning copper chest

Mary and fat book baby
with groaned open wood
A glass box    tidied up

   heaped    dull    clay    stone    shapes

slipped off fingers    altaring

Unlit flowers are candles
Put hands together
Close eyes child tight

     grey flaky biscuit stations
             a stick engraver

        Simon with a hair hat

        Veronica printing

        He's fallen and then fallen
        and falling again






The choir in which I sing tenor meets in the Chapel of Newman University for rehearsals.

You can find a translation from the German here.

Bus note 44

        Red light says stop.
Look through the window of the bus
and then through the window of a car.
        She reads her prayers
        (with picture of al-Ka'bah)
        from her smartphone.
There is no God
but God. Still but
        for the regular low
        combustion shake.
I've been watching for too long.

Window writing

Bus note 43

At the corner of Pershore
and Edgbaston Roads
the houses are gone.
        Felled trees seen
        above falling fence.
Thinning cold haze
makes for shivers outside.
        Here with warm engine
        beneath the seat
        in worn out blue moquette.
The wheels on the bus
go round and round
        while plugged-in music hisses
        from stopped ears.