MOTH

Pressed up against the narrow pane, the moth is rust,
its wings the colour of blood drying on stone.

The house and sky are one cubic dark through whose thin walls
the boy moves like a silken cloth,

buffing the brass urns and pewter mugs he touches.
Clots of light, straining through his palms, float in the air.

Dawn is a mile off, but when the house gets there,
a hard edge of fire cuts through the glass

and through the night's restraint:the boy grabs at the moth.
but stumbles, and his prize is just a shock

of sulphur wings that thrash in his hands and vaporise
while he falls headlong, his hands flecked with pollen-dust.

He comes to the window again, next dawn. There is no moth
to reach for. He slashes his palms on the fire-sharpened glass.
 

GRANDFATHER'S ESTATE

Steam of hard-ridden horses, squelch of crab apples
under hooves: these filter through the lattices.
Mouldy ashlars. Crackling of leaves being fired
in the yeard; swishing of billhooks
in the fields. Peat smoke; moths flit, unpeeled
from lanterns. For months now, the vexations
have piled up and nothing has worn a name
except the chirping of finches, the damp
creeping up the drains like a gaseous ivy.
Ripe wine, bitter almonds. He sits and listens
for the garnet drop to fall
at sunset on the open diary.

The tap-tapping of walking-sticks
on Minton floors upstairs, as if
queues of old men were conducting
discret negotiations with outlined Ming
vases and the upturned corners
of Isfahan carpets. The transoms are a music
of whisperings, a serenade of strings,
the gurgling nuptials of doves.
He hears the refrain of rain, his fingers
trickle down the page: moves in the dusk,
stratagems disarmed, the tentative devices
of a blind man's poetry.