Stevenage-Edinburgh

City of brick and glass -
my concrete Silkingrad has changed.
Goodbye to my parents,
and the Borough of Stevenage carries me
left into the long flat lands.
The Scots are here already.

Smoke and steam rise
behind heaps of trees.
Between the famous cities
the power station towers
stand on the flat green country.
Buzzing ticket inspectors
land on my skin.

Gentle mountains and ragged clouds
mark the beginning of wildness.
The trees are rougher too,
and the earth is still on fire.
'Have faith in God' says busy Newcastle -
but what's that cloudy brain above us
thinking?

Red fire over Morpeth
where smoke stains the pale clouds;
they die out where the sea begins.
Over sunny fields of sheep and straw-rolls
you can make out Norway's grey mountains -
a picturesque scene.

The Scottish sea is deep blue,
held between dusty land and sky.
They bring forgetfulness
until the sharp-edged town
presses into my consciousness.

Into the chaos, march across the sand,
bodies of bone and metal.
The city repeats itself
for the thousandth time.

What is my goal?
A room of people, some known, some unknown,
literary vampires, cultural ghouls,
forming and re-forming like clouds.
Flee and prepare yourself
for the great jaw.

1989

Beacon Hill

One evening, as the sun was declining,
I set up my chair on Beacon Hill
And let go.
A man in a broad-brimmed hat
Was flying his kite, bucking and turning
And I flew with it.
A lark came up, warbling beyond reason,
Then another,
And I soared between them.
Waves of cloud were washing above me,
The current taking my craft aloft
And out of the hazy world.

Knebworth-Wimbledon

'I am a barrister
and I sit half the time as a judge,'
says the square-shouldered lady,
whereas I sit on the train,
stealing away from the workplace
and back to my woman in London.

Violet sleep pales into azure sky
over Portakabin city
and then the magnificent arches
of King's Cross.

Returned to the light at Vauxhall,
I gaze at the glass palace,
the emerald palace
of a mysterious prince.
We do not have such sights at home!

Even Stevenage lacks
so many sunlit blocks of flats,
such golden arches,
so much art upon the walls.

The Knebworth ladies might be cold,
but the love bus welcomes everybody,
Chinese and curly Africans,
pale schoolboys with protruding ears
and those from out of town.

In a funny corner of Wimbledon
Maria opens her door to me,
waving and smiling like a Chinese.

Transformation of Trees

After John Sell Cotman, Duncombe Park, Yorkshire

The grey trees rise above the scarp -swaying -
slowly tumble heads down -foaming -
melt into the purple rocks -streaking -
flow out in a fleshy brook - smoking -
rise above the yellow scarp -ghosting -
condense in bodies of grey trees -swaying.

The above poem was based on one of Tamar Yoseloff's postcards at her workshop.