Before the kite plunges down into the wood

and this line goes useless

take in your two hands, boys, and feel

the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.

You were born fit for it.

Stand in here in front of me

and take the strain.

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

We were eye-level with the white cups

Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

East and miles west beyond us, sagging

Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing

Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires

In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light

Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

from Station Island

VII

I had come to the edge of the water,

soothed by just looking, idling over it

as if it were a clear barometer

or a mirror, when his reflection

did not appear but I sensed a presence

entering into my concentration

on not being concentrated as he spoke

my name. And though I was reluctant

I turned to meet his face and the shock

is still in me at what I saw. His brow

was blown open above the eye and blood

had dried on his neck and cheek. ‘Easy now,’

he said, ‘it’s only me. You’ve seen men as raw

after a football match … What time it was

when I was wakened up I still don’t know

but I heard this knocking, knocking, and it

scared me, like the phone in the small hours,

so I had the sense not to put on the light

but looked out from behind the curtain.

I saw two customers on the doorstep

and an old Land Rover with the doors open

parked on the street, so I let the curtain drop;

but they must have been waiting for it to move

for they shouted to come down into the shop.

She started to cry then and roll round the bed,

lamenting and lamenting to herself,

not even asking who it was. “Is your head

astray, or what’s come over you?” I roared, more

to bring myself to my senses

than out of any real anger at her

for the knocking shook me, the way they kept it up,

and her whingeing and half-screeching made it worse.

All the time they were shouting, “Shop!

Shop!” so I pulled on my shoes and a sportscoat

and went back to the window and called out,

“What do you want? Could you quieten the racket

or I’ll not come down at all.” “There’s a child not well.

Open up and see what you have got – pills

or a powder or something in a bottle,”