Tomorrow's News

shooting sprees
and bitter tribal fighting

the disappeared held captive
in underground jails

yesterday with modest splendour
they killed another man they didn't know

and only one voice
that of the eldest there
was raised in protest

on the mudflats of an estuary
in a blinding rainstorm
a ragged man in shackles
was tried and shot in secret
by the moral guardians of a state
in failing health
and dying of complications
its land reduced to smoking ruins

firemen played their hoses on the people
the spin of the story was ringing in their ears

another shot dead
in the back of a car
the remote village
in the mountains

an old man hanging from a tree

when dusk fell
the scene took on an air of beauty
of spiritual renewal
an occasion touched with magic

tomorrow's news

the official statistics
the death toll of bigotry

The Nomadic Traveller


journeys on with his son
and objects found on the road
are making the journey too

an album of drawings
a portable ancestral altar
a tree without roots


Old Fox

Old fox,
hard as nails,
thin,
arthritic,
rheumatic,
septic eruptions
on cold feet,
watery nose,
and sorry bag of effluvium
and entrails,
up for the erectile,
and somewhere to go.

Lakeside path,
snowdrop,
primrose,
daffodil,
an early bee,
an ermine's fur
turning brown,
an effusive gushing
of butterflies, gold-
finches, flycatchers,
two seasons
in equilibrium.

The rest is fusion.