(after John James)

 

                                   But is the

earth as full as life was full, of them?

– ‘A Step Away from Them’, Frank O‘Hara

 

A chill wet spring

this year

 

& the hanging gardens of Sketty

still ivy & bay

 

but then we still recall

the fens of Cambridgeshire

 

elaborate existences

on Catherine Street

 

those ubers summoned

for Rhydds Noah’s Whitez

 

& on to the sunlit Uplands

always awaiting

 

deckled blue & gold

in ancient livery

 

& always too that view

of Mumbles Head in the distance

 

Ali & James Tian & Margaret weigh

a poem of the torn frenulum

 

& we jest about Urquhart’s Rabelais

in the gloom of the New Brunswick

 

your fuliginous black beard

& greatcoat gravitas of a Titian prince

 

that will suddenly gaudy & out

Omar Pasha by Ashley Bickerton

 

wit ever gleaming sharp-shiny

as Ade’s arrows in The Railway Inn

 

a kind prodigious intelligence

to seek love & find it finally

 

though by then the rain had come down

on certain forlorn dark nights

 

not doucement doucement no

but filthy off the Celtic Sea

 

now a rural allotmenteer

before work I raise my Corbyn mug

 

cherishing your potlatch gift

to be unsparing & yet generous

 

and The Accursed Share

with its Missing you already, my friend

 

sorrow as the clock ticks past six

but knowing not your words did this

 

or any armful of gritty leeks

ergasy inkhorn or aureate

 

& that they speak true poesy

as you to our hearts cerebral cerebral

 

so mix me a special with ice in the kitchen

so set me a place at your Sunday roast

 

& from Brynmill to Burwell

register surf-noise at the sea’s lip

 

cheep of marsh-water running clear

& lark & gull above either

 

corny & true as you would know

who were so ahead of us all

 

& being in with the flow

to return as amused reason must

 

to smile & quiz

& leave us in your wake to learn

 

dear interlocutor dear flit

Chris you’re away & up for it