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                                 INDEX OF FIRST LINES

1988.  January.  Day 27
                                        (Kulta)

A bird’s fossil in the dense sea-groyne
                                        (The Blood Rules—Fear. 5)

A blind alley not three shoulders wide
                                        (The Blood Rules—Fear. 4)

A faith that’s tantamount to trees
                                        (E and D––Emily Dickinson)

A juvenile thing it is, to be told, changing sandals,
                                        (Leaving)

A peeping Tom, I’ve shot four petting couples,
                                        (Confidential)

A quintet of prophets once made a raid
                                        (Bedtime Story)

A stone’s throw down the field from the Ridge Mill
                                        (Ridge Mill)

A young lady sat down a jif
                                        (Old Folks’ Do)

Above the bay of sand and the birth-caps of foam
                                        (La Belle Lectrice)

After the visit to the sulphur geysers
                                        (Waitoma Cave)

After the waters broke
                                        (Prayer for my grandson)

Against catastrophe.  Take Wild Angelica . . .
                                        (Charm)

Allow the backward camera of the mind
                                        (For an Album)

allow the easter’s
                                        (make time)

An embryo with a bloodshot eye
                                        (The Cry of the Gull)

And even could I adumbrate, in signs
                                        (Being Here)

And I stóp the phóne,     you will néver cáll
                                        (It Is More a Case)

And now the rain is beginning, and she is
                                        (Elektra––Isis)

And we have art.  On the back wall of the Garden
                                        (Art)

And we have training
                                        (Training)

ants
                                        (The Poisons of Spring)

April is a sound after silence
                                        (April)

As far as sensual hindrance will allow
                                        (Nets I Cannot Pass)

As on a gilt trecento board
                                        (Grandmother and Child)

As we sizzle along the roads in Umbria, car-top glints
                                        (Miracle)

At least I was lucky.  I managed
                                        (Death’s Head)

At night on my four     unequally knackered
                                        (Litterbug)

At thirteen she did not want
                                        (The Night Porter)

Before Hitler’s bombs made their pits
                                        (Country Matters)

Before you could crawl
                                        (Dreamer)

Behind the barn, half-barn-size and half-seen
                                        (Genesis at Up Marden)

Boys then as now did not go with their mums
                                        (Mother)

But for a particle of heaven, finding
                                        (The Red Hotel)

But such inspiration
                                        (The Blood Rules—Prelude. 3)

Butterflies feed
                                        (The Blood Rules—Fear. 1)

Calabrian autumn and late morning chill, and still
                                        (The Political Prisoner)

Cats exercised in the garage.  Cats
                                        (Cat Woman)

daughter you have bad dreams
                                        (Bad Dreams)

Death came out of the forest hill
                                        (Portsmouth Elegy—5. The Sacred Things)

Do not, my soul, try to hunt
                                        (Catkin-blurs)

Do you remember the house we rented
                                        (The Cliff House)

Don’t expect I shall be the same again
                                        (The Pain of Helena Nagel—1)

Dragging through city or sea
                                        (The Blood Rules. Prelude. 1)

dream catcher
                                        (sleep guard)

Facts: you are here
                                        (Pelicans, Volcanoes)

Feed Baby a new a new jar of pap
                                        (Laughter, Taste, Docility)

Fey, unoriginal, refracting
                                        (Elektra––Elektra)

flat carving
                                        (figurine)

For the moment the thin tea and the floury scones
                                        (Rye)

For three years, while at large
                                        (Goatmoth)

For whom do we deck, prepare, groom
                                        (Christmas Eve)

Forest and flat, wigs of lichen sewn
                                        (Finland)

Great to have the translating angel
                                        (The Big Issue)

Guinevere had, lustrously aside
                                        (Zen)

Habits urbane, even debonair
                                        (Bertram’s Way)

He has docked cargoes with weird provenance
                                        (Rum Lot)

He is the victim, speaks for a perished species:
                                        (Elektra––Her fashion now)

He is your baby.  Or your daughter’s or granddaughter’s
                                        (Child)

He kept him prisoner for days
                                        (Epigram––He kept him)

He must destroy what has destroyed
                                        (Aries)

He smears the wall with shit and phlegm and blood
                                        (The Moral Maze)

Heavy alarm on the gross bass drum
                                        (Striptease)

Hello, a butterfly hot enough hops
                                        (Trogonoptera Brookiana)

Her arm around his neck, his meaty hand
                                        (The Kiss)

Her chiffon scarf quiffed stiffly under the jib. . .
                                        (Wych Hazel)

Her thumb caressed the young lifeline of
                                        (Oracle)

High wind at Whitsuntide and all week
                                        (An Age Turns)

His laugh no refuge, the safe
                                        (Elektra––The god of the woods)

I alchemist on a fir-covered isle
                                        (The Blood Rules—Pain. 5)

I am a god, a membranous whirl, a powerful
                                        (Dragonfly)

I Am A Sweated Industry
                                        (I am a sweated industry)

I am the terrified ache
                                        (The Blood Rules—Pain. 1)

I am up late, there is a doorbell
                                        (3 a.m.)

I can be assured to find her most days
                                        (Taurus)

I did not know I loved that pair
                                        (She Prays That God Is Still In Pain)

I don't expect to unpick your brain
                                        (The Cleaner)

I fed the monotonous shore
                                        (I Fed)

I give them to children to play with
                                        (Conjurer)

I have a door open onto the hot forest
                                        (The Blood Rules—Light. 3)

I have no trouble with parallel universes
                                        (Reserve)

I lie rough in sun-baked skin-oil
                                        (She Runs Through Running Water)

I love the flow of you
                                        (the Alexine poems—2. lullwater)

I met God in a downtown street
                                        (Hard Cheese)

I remember many a time when lust
                                        (Centaurs)

I remember the pier at Southsea
                                        (Portrait of a Lady)

I size up windows from the garden’s end
                                        (The Windows)

I still think of boyhood bookshops, the time I took
                                        (What Horror’s About)

I take my children to the wood.  Damn love
                                        (The Pain of Helena Nagel—2)

I think of you
                                        (Wedding)

I was born with earache.  My first
                                        (Street Games)

I watch at the fisherboy’s shoulder
                                        (Dead Serpentine)

I will have no more fiction.  She is
                                        (Elektra––The moonstone)

I write to you, who are still part of me
                                        (Letter to Crispin)

I, lame god, hide, muttering in my teeth
                                        (The Birth of Venus)

I’ll not forget
                                        (Your Smell of Now)

I’ve seen the leaf constrained to come
                                        (Elektra––Time’s Steady State)

If in your dream my dream might softly enter
                                        (Anniversary)

If it moves kill it
                                        (The Blood Rules—Fear. 3)

If you are set on travelling
                                        (The Mental Traveller)

In a reticule of sunlight among grass-blades
                                        (Trauma)

In chapped armour, low in esteem, the Devil rode
                                        (The Devil’s Ride)

In dreams I am various me’s from past layers
                                        (The Company of Selves)

In my garden fluff-heads and bald eyes
                                        (Feel Good)

In the pond net we use
                                        (Copulation)

In the sea-seasoned black timber
                                        (Full Fathom Five)

Instead of bone it uses a kind of plastic
                                        (Alien Anatomy)

is it suntans or wallets
                                        (port isaac)

it is no good giving in
                                        (children of the new forest)

It rains every day at three,
                                        (Cedar Key)

It was the sort of sun that towed our children
                                        (Too Many Children For One Garden)

It’s ten to one in the pouring street
                                        (Gone)

It’s time we worshipped the moon again
                                        (It’s Time)

Its rôle, iniquitous in the dark scene’s rear
                                        (Look, Grief, Alive)

Jesus looked up from the tortured olive grove
                                        (Jesus Looked Up)
Just for the pleasure of circling the curtained urbs
                                        (Nip Out)

Kids no more, though captains of chugging toys
                                        (The Hobbyists)

Last night, like a new cause, my death began
                                        (My Death Began)

Let us go to the necropolis
                                        (Ta Hes Visits Her Tomb)

Like a roving planetoid that might have hit us
                                        (Lunacy)

Long before you died they’d altered it
                                        (Portsmouth Elegy—3. Imperfect City)

Love juice, semen, saliva, blood
                                        (Love Juice)

Love, perhaps?  Perhaps I loved
                                        (Love Story—6. Love, Perhaps)

Low-lying along the estuary
                                        (Depot)

Luckily the configurated space
                                        (Making Sense Luckily)

Madam, I must object to what you are
                                        (Life Styles)

Male body.  Hot.  Your chest is a precipice
                                        (Her Answer)

Middens and palaces, satchel and tramcar
                                        (Fracture)

My delicate dear child.  I can hold your
                                        (The Pain of Helena Nagel—4)

My father hugged his hod
                                        (Dad)

My guilt is I let you die, mother
                                        (Portsmouth Elegy—4. Black Mountains)

My parents had one of their rows. 
                                        (Heirloom)

Near a craggy islet, chucked by the wind, rising
                                        (Air Combat)

Nicely, heart’s bawd, your words caress
                                        (Love Story—4. Conscience)

Noise outside at midnight in trees
                                        (Chimes)

Not civet’s ooze nor Magie by Lancôme
                                        (It Smells of Mortality)

Not far from Troy
                                        (Iron Age)

Not sixteen, I swam the streets
                                        (Night Walks)

October sheds menstrual leaves
                                        (October)

Oh gather the heart that’s done away
                                        (E and D—Dorothy Parker)

Oh, bloody hills, darker and vaster
                                        (Love Story—7. She)

Old man’s pipe ashes
                                        (Black Sun)

On Lago di Garda: a time to collect thoughts
                                        (Thanatos)

On the cliff-top in a volcanic moon
                                        (The Blood Rules—Coda. 2)

On the farthest corner of the green shore
                                        (Portsmouth Elegy—1. Tide Out and Gull Angel)

On the square, tumbled out
                                        (On the Square)

only from Thought’s dolphin
                                        (The Red Poem)

Out of the Laplacian the mandrill comes
                                        (The Laplacian)

Peroxide was a domestic
                                        (Hospitals)

Promise, she said.—Although we’d said
                                        (Love Story—5: Promise)

Protopopov and Belousova, a few thanks
                                        (Olympic)

Red gouts of magma catapult and fall
                                        (Word Game)

Resign your last stitch of repute
                                        (Love Story—2. Second Encounter: Town)

Revenge does not discriminate
                                        (Kosovo 1999)

Road gripped with frost, with scarce and flinty nails
                                        (Car Drive)

Rock, city, in your after-fever sleep
                                        (Faustus)