Four Poems

Borderlands
for Christopher Middleton

Poems for the dead? Art as exploration
of those 'shimmering borderlands'
between them and us? I imagine
a sort of Tarkovsky landscape (but with
- don't worry - a few Greek ruins)
gulls nesting in deserted guns;
a few tribes left; some comings-and-goings;
earth poised between long slow breaths,
deciding whether to move on. Then, at last,
the sun coming up like an enormous campfire. In
the meantime your 'radiance of the smallest chance
to be glad for what we cannot possess'. Ruth
choosing exile; all the borderposts deserted;
locality a place where strangers meet
...