There is a little girl across the drizzle in her right hand an umbrella fumbling her left hand waving tears at the edge of the prairie, a tree and a fledgling…

After ‘Klokkar’, by Sofie Paulsgård and sometimes, when I’m woken by the night train to Central Station, the carriages swallowed southwards at the start of the long route home, I hold my hand against your chest until your body becomes mine, my body yours and still hours until dawn. when the sea’s tongue traces the […]

What is time? It’s today, yesterday and tomorrow; It’s something that will be, that is, that was. Time is like feathers and sometimes like chains… We don’t have it when we need it most. For children it’s like a pile to the sun, But age cracks with every hour; No man can buy it, stretch […]

(A royal witness hymn and monumental inscription) For Nanna, whose magnificent head is supported by the Pantheon (Sky-God and the Princes in his temple), his great man— The One of the One Man, a mighty man, the great man of Ur city— when Nanna from Anshan city to Ur city brought him, a magnificent tower, […]

It was a momentary quarrel. The voices shattered against the walls and doors the way glass shatters into smithereens- the shards flew everywhere, stinging, burning unbearably… They seeped into the gazes, the words, the tone; into the thoughts, the breath. A relationship was fated to be murdered and it happened that day! That night, somebody […]

Blanched red flowers cling to a budding tree and when the swallow takes flight he circles the water and houses. The pollen begins to scatter in the breeze – headed for the green horizon of endless vegetation. Inside the garden walls is a swing and outside is a road. Outside the garden are passing strangers […]

Certainly the district seagulls have waited in vain for the breadcrumbs that I threw on your balcony so that you might hear even shut away in slumber their screeching. Today we miss the date, the both of us and our breakfast chills through stacks of useless books for me and of relics for you that […]

Alas, my worthy master honourable, The riches and the treasure of this land! Death, by your death, has dealt irreparable And grievous harm: the vengeance of her hand Has robbed our country of the sweet command Of speech; for no-one else was ever so Adept an orator as Cicero. And who was heir to Aristotle […]

From the top of the mountains the twilight blows with crimson lips into the ashes of the clouds and rekindles the embers hidden underneath their flimsy wave of ash. A ray which emerges chased from the sunset gathers its wings and settles trembling on a leaf: but too heavy is the burden – and the […]

You are my dreams. When I rest my aching legs You come…go. I glimpse a shadow of you, But I shall not see you while I work.

Out of which sky is this poison that waters my life day by day dripping? Where is that light that flooded my existence when my look was touching the lightly outlined body under the menswear clothes? It was then when the words were overflowing, the ideas were flying like wild birds refusing to feed on […]

Oh lass, the little heat inside you’s cold and all the rest can see is slap and glitter. Each eyelash curl’s negation, badly told your thoughts, in vacant shrills on Twitter. Your hours chirruped out with “God, see him”, in tear-eaten paint, charmless promotion. Your nights with practised easiness, in skin chastised to shrug and […]