Five Poems

We may be able to reduce the number of different
things (i)

Here on my little river-beach with Feynman
(he who professes the nose of a spaniel)
I practise the learned thought of how the local heron
will feel the same current in air as in water,
that this flow slips by the delta-wing,
rips the tide round Sark,
braces the fox as he sets
his mask for home,
and that all these can be understood together,
drawn in lines that themselves
bear nothing, move nothing,
yet, with just the faintest nudge for variables,
display the laws that bring the log ashore
like a heavy man.


We may be able to reduce the number of different
...