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shall see the place
    That you so desire
    Come to be usurped
    & you shall enter the land of Bedlam.
    Holy lightning struck
    In his mortal brain
    & the hills around
    Cried aloud in pain
    & holy storm clouds gathered, bringing rain.
V
    Voices in the dark
    Pleading to be free.
    One of them is low,
    One of them is shrill –
    Big Bumperton is talking to himself
    ‘Hungry will I be
    & cold showers take –
    Holy punishment!
    Punishment divine!
    Spare me no humiliation!
    O Lord, forgive them all,
    These your ministers,
    Of your purpose high
    Ignorant entire.
    I am punished for their disbelief.
    Wisely did you send
    Her into my bed
    That my senses rent,
    For without her sin
    I would not have known innocence divine!
    Divine innocence!
    & I’ll keep thy laws
    Hallow thy Sabbath
    Walk in the spirit
    & make a new Heaven & a new Earth!’
VI
    Big Bumperton is charged with electricity
    Like a landscape
    An abstraction
    A magnified pupil.
    After the electroshocks
    He no longer understands locks
    Or answers to his name or remembers
    His late wife.
    ‘Gentlemen, by means of this X-ray you can see
    The patient has swallowed his front-door key
    & a small pocket knife
    With which he did the wicked deed.’
    O Big Bumperton! Let others hurl insults – ‘Madman!’ ‘Murderer!’ –
    While you ascend on your invisible bicycle
    Ever closer to the cherry-red lips of your star,
    A bright smiling star like a chorus girl.

ASHES
    are bodies in disguise
    mixing sighs and
    tears in a lost garden.
    An air of importance
    permeates these
    cosmonauts of
    compost,
    which the pomp of sky and stars
    ignores.
    Foolish men
    inhabit their bodies like
    metaphors.

DEATH OF A SENATOR
    From whorehouse to hospital morgue
           They carried his bier
    And questions were asked in the Senate
           Of an old bawd.
    They carried his bier
           Talking of plans for a statue
    Of an old bawd
           Following his coffin.
    Talking of plans for a statue
           On the Statehouse lawn
    Following his coffin
           From funeral to family plot.
    On the Statehouse lawn
           His widow was led
    From funeral to family plot
           To waltz with a mystery man.
    His widow was led
           From palm lounge to dance floor
    To waltz with a mystery man
           Suffused with exotic suspense.
    From palm lounge to dance floor
           From war zone to uninhabited citadel
    Suffused with exotic suspense
           Watched by the patient sniper.
    From war zone to uninhabited citadel
           Her son ran in terror
    Watched by the patient sniper
           Surrounded by drifting sands.
    Her son ran in terror
           From whorehouse to hospital morgue
    Surrounded by drifting sands
           And questions were asked in the Senate.

BIRDS
    i.m. Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006)
    Your name is a – bird in my hand.
    T SVETAEVA
    They are shooting birds in Russia
    to prevent the spread of
    infection. The State Hygiene
    Agency’s instructions are
    to shoot birds
    in population centres
    and in their nesting places.
    ‘The shooting of birds is
    pointless,’ said one expert.
    ‘Birds are very mobile
    and there are so many
    you can never exterminate
    them all even if you give
    every idiot a gun.’

ILLUSTRATED EVENINGS
    Evenings were longer then, a winter chill
    turned in the headlamps of returning care.
    Street lighting and a confounding moon make pale
    the carried and reluctant carrier.
    Words sink like stones in the air.
    So the weather drops another degree.
    Pestered by their bodies, woken from dreams,
    impatient invalids stoke the fire.
    Something like this illustrated evenings ignore.
    Difficult breathing, the worry of drums
    and that season’s native mystery.

PARASITE
    … it did not want to love yet wanted to live on love.
    T HUS S POKE Z ARATHUSTRA
    They breed on the branches of trees,
    colonise the land, seek safety in numbers
    and keep moist by drinking sugary soft drinks.
    Vulnerable to the