Flanders

A vague land of uncertain boundaries

Suits my nature well enough,

Conducive to unlikely musings.

Snake-eyed days evoke an odd mystique.

Sand,salt and mud are the currencies

I trade for clouds and sounds.


Puppets and giants toll the bells

Of churches emerging from sea-mist

And life is carried like a retable

Through streets that reek beer and chips.

Reinaert the Fox is up to his tricks,

Trapping foes with their own vices;

His cruel resourcefulness as sharp

As a fallen knight’s spur.


To slip the noose and pursue the Grail

In Ghent or Antwerp, through carnivals

And crucifixions,I will sing,sing like a finch

In an old man’s hands,the slave of the Virgin.

Magpie towns,hooded like beguines,

I weave them all,the rivers and trees

Into each other,with shuttling mind,

And,like a swan-cloaked Duke of Burgundy,

Stuff the world into my purse.


Regimental badges,scraps of cloth

And bone-shards: all that remains

Of a nameless man-at-war,billeted

In Hades,with all the useless dead,

Around Ypres,the thrifty earth loath

To let them go.For centuries, the townsfolk

Threw live cats from the belfry

To propitiate the chuckling Devil.


Each evening at eight

Two buglers meet

To sound the Last Post.

They pull up on their bicycles

Snap to attention,

Wait for the police to stop the traffic,

Then sound their notes

Against the walls

Of the Menin Gate-

Job done,they climb back on their bicycles

And ride away

As the traffic starts racing again.