Yes now, like you, I wonder: where / is the patron saint of exiles / and far districts, this prefecture / of salt licks, pollen? Of alleys / / blue with plaques? And who among those / martyrs gives the nieces we have / yet to hold close our faces to / learn, our names to try? Who will halve...

For the Weyward Sisters / / / talk about sleeping / you dream in black and white / i dream in fauve and phosphor / / cities where people are held for interrogation / cities where taxidrivers and policemen / systematize their criminality / cities where the friends i can depend on / meet...

I / / Finally the search is declared closed. / The brilliant lights yellow and expire, / / the mechanical diggers fall quiet, / folding awkwardly upon themselves, / / touching their knuckles gently to the rubble – / old beasts preparing for the winter sleep. / / Beneath the crossed gi...

I see all the black marks on the page, the lines / hallucinations falling off the edge of the world – my tongue / we haven’t talked about desperation, / yet you tell me about pornography, girls with death wishes / attached to their libidos, little warm arrows / aligned to their supple bodies, i...

1 / / The object is ‘vibrant,’ ‘withdrawn,’ / and ‘incoherent.’ / / A small range of times / co-exist within the object / / or, if the object is large, / it may extend through times / / that are unwilling / to co-exist. / / In this sense, the object / hasn’t been itself lately. ...

After the revolt had failed and I’d turned into a fox / I left the church where we had sheltered / knowing that my co-conspirators / were even then being laid out under hedges / in all likelihood, / like rolled-up carpets after a party, / some with their balls stuffed in their mouths, / and t...

'Don't like the Italian poems so much' / the email growled. The nerve it tried to touch / just slumbered on, but later he'd to ask, / 'Why write about Venetian scene or masque / when there is plenty enough misery / for you to shape a resonant simile / from in the street: cemented shore / weal...

Landscape bares itself like the totality / of hís love as the evangelists conceived it – / an olive tree twists in its private dusk / then stands an awful second / as the brief bars of light go scurrying by. / So smooth, so smooth in its carriage / the train hisses, suave gesture of contempt ...

‘If it had been told to me I should not have believed it. / The night had burnt itself out and the morning was a miniscule new flame / Over the sifting waters of the river. Where were the angels / Attending like apothecaries to St Erasmus? None of them came. / That place was beautiful till then....

but enough about me, Manning says / as he adjust his tights under what we take for a moon. / / There’s a cascading swagger, / everything is joy in a thin strip: / / Forgive me, the trees themselves / are morose rather than lightweight, the sky is certainly lit. / The ground bows down lik...