The University of Essex

(for John Barrell)

1. gone to lunch back in five minutes

night closed in on my letter of resignation

out in the square one of my threads had broken loose

the language i used was no and no

while the yellow still came through, the hammer and the drills

occasionally the metabolism alters

and lines no longer come express

waiting for you what muscles work me

which hold me down below my head?

it is a long coat and a van on the horizon

a bird that vanishes the arabic

i learn from observation is how to break the line

(genius creates surprises : the metropolitan

police band singing ‘bless this house’

as the filmed extractor fans inflate the house with steam

2. walking my back home

the wind

is the wind

is a no-vo-cain band

and the footstep

echoes

have conjured people

3. ah, it all falls into place

when it was time what he had left became a tile

bodies held shaped by the pressure of air

were clipped to his attention by their gestures

my but we do have powerful muscles

each of us equal to gravity

or sunlight that forces our shadows

into the pieces of a fully interlocking puzzle

4. good morning he whispered

the horrors of the horses are the crows

the bird flies past the outside the library

many heels have trapped the same way

he tolls, he lapsed with the light from so many trees

check the pattern swerves with the back

the tree that holds the metal spiral staircase swings

aloft the hand removes a book and checked it

for death by glasses or the angle food descends

5. the broadcast

she turns me on she turns on me

that the view from the window is a lake

and silent cars are given the noise of flies dying in the heat

of the library the grass outside goes brown

in my head behind my glasses behind the glass in the precinct

thus, too, they whisper in museums and banks

Source: Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2003)