CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Acknowledgements

 

from THE DWELLING-PLACE (1977)

I

The Exile

Chiaroscuro

The Invalid Storyteller

The Sparking of the Forge

East Anglian Churchyard

Genealogy: The Portrait

Victorian Gothic

The Ruined Abbey

The Long Climb

The Well

II

The Dedication

The Rector

Arthur Dead

In Malignant Times

Likeness

The Goldsmith

Sanctuary

The Disenchanted

Bird Watcher

Saxon Buckle

 

from DEVOTIONS (1982)

I

The Advent Carols

Narcissus, Echo

My Great Aunt, Nearing Death

On the Demolition of the ‘Kite’ District

Il Palazzo della Ragione

Pony and Boy

Two Cambridge Images

Beyond Recall

 

II from Air and Earth

Migrant

Beside the Autobahn

Aerial Songs

On the Devil’s Dyke

III

The Natural History of the Rook

Near Walsingham

Home

Homecoming

For the Fly-Leaf of a King James Bible

Antiphonal Sonnets

Gothic Polyphony

To Nicholas Hawksmoor

Venice

A Woodland Scene

The Parable of the Sower

The Peaceable Kingdom

Chinoiserie: The Porcelain Garden

Prayer for my Children

 

OF EARTHLY PARADISE (1992)

I

Invocation

Three Brueghel Paintings

St Francis Preaching to the Birds

The San Damiano Crucifix

The Coat of Many Colours

Cattle Market

Birdsong and Polyphony

The Infinite Variety

The Thirst

To Robert Wells

 

II A Catalogue of Flowers

Wild Flowers

Bindweed Song

An Autumn Vision

Post-war Childhoods

Conservancy

Alkanet

To Paint a Salt Marsh

III

Work

The Law of the House

At the Grave of Ezra Pound

At the Grave of William Morris

Fonte Branda in Siena

A Plaque

To a Poet from Eastern Europe, 1988

To Haydn and Mozart

The Kitchen Table

IV

Charon’s Bark

Two Journals

The Temple of Aphrodite

Amores

Re-reading my Poem ‘Saxon Buckle’

Transference

The Dream

In the Greenwood

The Garden

Oasis

The Earth Rising

V

Caedmon of Whitby

 

KING ALFRED’S BOOK & OTHER POEMS (1992–2000)

I

King Alfred’s Book

Lindisfarne Sacked

House-martin

The River in Springtime

The Manor House

Anthem

Psalm

Grace

The Pig Man

Kaspar Hauser

 

II Three Epistles

To Thom Gunn, on his Sixtieth Birthday

Letter to J.A. Cuddon

In Memoriam Graham Davies, Psychotherapist (1937–1993)

III

Visitation

The Heron

Vacations

To Pyrrha

Soft and Hard Porn

Fin de Siècle

The New Era

IV

Epitaph

At a Friend’s Funeral

Fernando Pessoa’s Lisbon

Wood Work

Stone Work

A Baroque Concerto

Casa Natal de Borges

The Translator’s Apology

Olivier Messiaen

 

THE MYSTERY OF THINGS (2006)

I

Bottom’s Dream

Dog Rose in June

Wonderwoman

Greensleeves

In the Library

The Ruin

Much Ado about Nothing

The Holy of Holies

Recorded Message

A Vision

The Ladder

Bethel

The Architect at his Mountain Villa

For my Daughter’s Wedding

Overnight Snow

Plenty

Chutney

The Apple Trees

At Great Coxwell

Behold, the Fowls of the Air

In the Beginning

W.S. Graham Reading

To George Herbert

The Source

The Falls

II

Ghostliness

Stigmata

I The Visit to La Verna

II A Quotation

III As it Was

IV The Conversation

V Padre Pio

VI Symmetry

VII Spiritual Biography

VIII Walled Garden

IX The Second Day

X Piero’s Resurrection (1)

XI Piero’s Resurrection (2)

XII Healer

XIII The Names of Flowers

XIV The Desert

The Need for Angels

 

REPORT FROM NOWHERE & OTHER POEMS (2006–2011)

I

To One who Accused him of Writing Hate-mail

Meditation

To a Buddhist

The Nice and the Nasty

The Language of Flowers

Message

To his Muse

II

Learning to Read

In the Conservatory

A Blue Tit’s Egg

Gregoire, 60

Cinnabar Moth

A Curse

Gaudier-Brzeska in the Trenches

A Farmhouse near Modena, c.1980

III

Remembering John Heath-Stubbs

Shakespeare

Brook’s Lear

In Hospital

Fragment

A Far-off Country

Civitas

Report from Nowhere

 

POEMS WRITTEN FOR SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE (2009–10)