Annals of Alan

Donna

Accompanying Death

Avi

Spree

Observance

The Future

Talking in Kitchens

Special Effects

A Blessing for the Big Men

The Package from Latvia

Manifesto on Sunday

Adeline

Collusion

Charm for Unfruitful Land

Grace and the Chilcot Inquiry

The Wonder

History of the Sonnet

Progress

City of Destruction

The Dog

Hill Difficulty

First Cause of the Hubbub

Mr Skill

Christian’s Deplorable Condition

Land of Vainglory

Plain Called Ease

Mr Brisk

Hill Lucre

Giants Pope and Pagan

Vanity Fair

Valley of Humiliation

Mount Clear

Enchanted Ground

Mr Implacable

Country of Conceit

Porter Watchful

House of the Interpreter

Mr Self-Will

Chastised by a Shining One

Fierceness of the Lions

Mr Malice

Reliever

Valley of the Shadow

Giant Despair

Man in an Iron Cage

Mr Enmity

Giant Grim

Mr Hold-the-World

By-Path Meadow

Valley of Humiliation

Wicket Gate

Gaius’s Inn

The Arbour

Mr Honest

House Beautiful

Praise

Epithalamium

You’re beeswax and I’m birdshit.

I’m mostly harmless. You’re irrational.

If I’m iniquity then you’re theft.

One of us is supercalifragilistic.

If I’m the most insane disgusting filth

you’re hardly curiosa.

You’re bubblewrap to my fingertips.

You’re winter sleep and I’m the bee dance.

And I am menthol and you are eggshell.

When you’re atrocious I am Spellcheck.

You’re the yen. I’m the Nepalese pound.

If I’m homesteading you’re radical chic.

I’m carpet shock and you’re the rail.

I’m Memory Foam Day on Price-Drop TV

and you’re the Lord of Misrule who shrieks

when I surface in goggles through duckweed,

and I am Trafalgar, and you’re Waterloo,

and frequently it seems to me that I am you,

and you are me. If I’m the rising incantation

you’re the charm, or I am, or you are.

Condolence

Tucked up in the top bunk under my Spiderman duvet

I half-follow a story with a beginning and an end,

then she tiptoes the hallway to stand by the hearth

and considers, and sits, and slips the ruled sheet

behind the front page of her pad to write out in good

phrases to wives and the parents of husbands

with such slow deliberation the slack is blanched

and collapses, and the fire consumed by its ashes.

Santa Maddelena

Cool air massing on the mountain

passes through the ruled bamboo

with rumours of Etruscan archers

underneath our open window,

drawing arrows, creaking bows.

We are each other’s provocation

and since noon no one has spoken.

Even to myself I seem like something

withstood, but it will be dark in ten,

and I’m glad the linden by the pool

yields in the breeze, then steadies,

ordering the tremor of its leaves

again to an unbroken canopy,

like the shields of legionaries.

Go Giants

Go go gadget legs. Go right. Go left.

Go wrong. Go west. Go down to the sea

in ships. Go down to the river and pray.

Go fish. Go first. Go forth and multiply.

Go in now and say goodbye. Go blind.

Go deaf. Go short. Go long. Go to press.

Go to pot. Go fuck yourself. Go straight.