'I’d look up to them looming on street corners, / or down on them at night through my bedroom blinds, / crashing home from the Labour Club, mad drunk. / After a while I decided they must be unhappy.'
'When we got in my cousin said / let’s climb that hill. We had just / got in from Rome and Cantelice / twisted away from the second story / window in cobble and brick.'
My big sister rings to say she is riding around / on the back of Richard’s motorbike and would I like to meet for a drink. / Richard is a married man. My sister is gay and I am always / dropping this in to conversation.
'Almost no one knows / that Ulrich Gwerder, / who, dressed as a merry shepherd, / posed in 1970 for a jazzy poster / for Tourist Information / in the city of Lucerne / was – at heart – a leftie.'
'Snubbed by her cheerfulness like a loud door / how can I greet her without adjustments? / So when she’s gone I always stray / after her temperament, her air – / hoping to keep step with her in her absence.'