Ventriloquise your lust for blood through me,
a pound for every three of body weight
I only know the purse and wounded sleep
my flesh is rich and rippled
sustained on beef and porter
in my corner’s tavern

Ribcage, diaphragm, collarbone, jaw;
I articulate your weakness as I find,
test your empire’s strength on mine
chance your arm to lose an eye
a year’s worth of labour
wagered on my back

I laid out Tom the Greek in Taplow station yard
two hours, three minutes standing
trading blood and punches
like hands of cards where clubs lead hearts
until the pack divides
to patron’s diamond or sexton’s spade

Harder work than navvying Sonning,
darker than Kilsby tunnel,
I grab this chance of glory
with both bareknuckled hands
and leave a dead man’s teeth
on the cobbles, horseshit and straw

No thirst to slake, nor itch to sin
no alacritous soul to fill a skin
nor bruited wavering strength within
For the high route march to Capel-y-ffin

Peppery footsteps gathering in
the sheep and the goats, the kith and kin,
the lost, the found and the steeped in gin
On the drunken road to Capel-y-ffin

Ten to make and the match to win
but the top is as bleak as original sin
and you wonder if it might take spin
from the Nursery End at Capel-y-ffin

The word-blank page is bible thin,
Is your parchment, chemotherical skin,
Is the point from where the dead begin
To bluff their way to Capel-y-ffin

Where they’re gilding a cage wherefore to pin
Ambivalent balancing angels in
Desire is down and the air is thin
at the fork in the road to Capel-y-ffin

So bed down now where all things begin,
In Yeats’s cymric boneshop twin
Further up and further in,
Beat the retreat to Capel-y-ffin

He stumbled into destiny out there,
tripping on a corpse in disarray;
brought its incoherence back,
the foreign shouts, guttural breath,
heard, or half-imagined heard,
in his retreat from bar to bar

The wind blowing in from off the Atlantic
goes through the patched-up fences in his head
where the rags of soldiers
are caught on hawthorn barbs
and no flower as sweet as poppy
blooms to intoxicate the dead

Like a nervous batsman,
on a cracked, uneven pitch,
my timing’s gone, my shot selection poor

I scratch around for rhythm and form,
while fielders’ impish shadows cast
distraction on a length

As much as weariness and drought
the mental game will wear you down;
my grip’s too loose, my stance askew, and this bat weighs a ton.

A bowler paces back with languid threat
to start his run at the turning point,
half a county away

You dream of an innings laced with panache,
as you watch his silent canter in,
the full array of strokes, a decent score

the marriage of technique and grace,
Of hooks, pulls, sweeps and drives,
imagined and remembered things,

And not these thin and meagre flukes
you nick and slice and edge away
to backward square of leg

He reaches his delivery stride,
you steel yourself to face and guard
and try to pick the line,

Asking yourself
if it’s too late now
to appeal against the light

Start again
discarding what you know
let go of the repeated paths
and let new formulae begin
to order out of nothing, chaos,
out of chaos, order

New gravities will happen
and those delicious moments
when paradox is tumbril for the senses
will climb; and breaking air for water,
blood for wine,
soar into those spaces you have hawked
from town to town in hope of good

No longer will we be able to say
the wrong thing twice
or stutter in the face of indiscretion
love will keep on lifting us higher and higher

the motto for the terror is
begin begin begin