Poetry Anthology

• Ozymandias

  'sneer of cold command'

  'wrinkled lip'

  'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Ye mighty and despair'

  'colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away'
• London

  'charter'd street' 'charter'd Thames'

  'marks of weakness, marks of woe'

  'the mind-forg'd manacles I hear'

  'blackning church appalls'

  'marriage hearse'
• Exposure

  'our brains ache in the merciless east iced winds that knive us'

  'watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire'

  'flickering gunnery rumbles Far off like a dull rumour of some other war'

  'we only know war lasts, rains soaks and clouds sag stormy'

  'but nothing happens'

  'dawn massing in the east her melancholy army'
• Storm on the island

  'Nor are there trees which might prove company when it blows full blast'

  'when it begins, the flung spray hits the very windows, spit like a tame cat turned savage'

  'we just sit tight while the wind dives and strafes invisibly'
• War Photographer

  'spools of suffering set out in ordered rows'

  'The only light is red and softly glows as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass'

  'blood stained into foreign dust'

  'he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care'
• The Prelude


  ' One summer evening (led by her) '

  ' an act of stealth and troubled pleasure '

  ' When... the horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge '

  ' With trembling oars I turned, And through the silent water stole my way back to the covert of the willow tree '
• The Emigree


  ' They accuse me of absence, They circle me. They accuse me of being dark in their free city. My city hides behind me. '

  ' It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants, but I am branded by an impression of sunlights '

  ' my memory of it is sunlight-clear for it seems I never saw it in that November which, I am told, comes to the mildest city
'
• Charge of the light brigade


  ' All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred
'

  ' Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell '

  ' Into the jaws of Death Into the mouth of hell '
• Kamikaze


  Her father embarked at sunrise with a flask of water '

  ' he must have looked far down at the little fishing boats strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea '

  ' And though he came back, my mother never spoke again in his presence…and the neighbours too, they treated him as though he never existed '
• Remains


  ' On another occasion, we got sent out to tackle looters raiding a bank'

  ' Well myself and somebody else and somebody else are all of the same mind, so all three of us open fire'

  ' His blood-shadow stays on the street and out on patrol I walk right over it week after week '
• Tissue


  ' Layer over layer…and never to wish to build again with brick'

  ' Fine slips from grocery shops…credit card might fly our lives like paper kites'

  ' Pages smoothed and stroked and turned transparent with attention'
• Poppies


  ' Before you left, I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer

  'Sellotape bandaged around my hand…steeled the softening of my face'

  ' I was brave, as I walked with you, to the front door, threw it open, the world overflowing like a treasure chest'

  ' Later a single dove flew from the pear free and this is where it has led me, skirting the church yard walls'
• Bayonet Charge


  ' Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedge That dazzled with rifle fire'

  ' The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye Sweating like molten from the centre of his chest
'

  ' Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame And crawled in a threshing circle
'

  ' In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations Was the hand pointing that second
'
• Checking Out Me History

  ' Dem tell me Dem tell me
'

  ' Bandage up me eye with me own history Blind me to my own identity
'

  ' mountain dream fire-woman struggle hopeful stream to freedom river
'

  ' But now…I carving out me identity '