Clish
Some poets wear loss like an honour, shine line
and syntax until, bright, it stars the dark.
Why write? Why use up in words the shared nights
slurring stories until late? What is this, then,
a casket for his ashes, a monument for the man?
You asked if I'm writing much. Well,
it won't come. It won't come. In my hands, thoughts
are sand; in my mouth, words too drunk to talk.
Written by Gregor Addison
Our sycamore has posted old news to the ground, though other trees have still a few bright things to say. What happened to my father’s letters? Early birds shifting between branches brought his hand
Son, today when I stare at my cupped hands I remember how as a calf she suckled my fingers; that sticky trickle of her rough tongue, how she would follow me around the pen. Later as a heifer, the ener
Hrabal in Dumbarton and Ballantyne's a cinnamon brick amongst the drab unasked-for grey, a half-drunk figure facing eternity and death. How like the town he drives through? How distant now from the po