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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)

round the post office depot is razor wire
                                        (et in arcadia)

Script writers, movie directors, have their manual
                                        (The Art of Deception)

Sealed room.  In a corner
                                        (Sealed Room)

See that you remember my pain
                                        (The Blood Rules—Coda. 1)

Senorita in Hay, your kissy smile
                                        (Effy’s)

She read us The Water Babies, made me sit
                                        (Miss Webbley)

Sixteen is when the gays want legal sex
                                        (Please Yourself)

Sleep, silhouette, beneath night’s bridge
                                        (Sleep, Silhouette)

Smell of pig-swill petrol swedes
                                        (The Blood Rules—Pain. 3)

Snow-dots printed on the cold
                                        (Winter Transit)

St Olave’s crypt cold low and bare
                                        (The Blood Rules—Pain. 4)

That is how it was always
                                        (The Unfield)

That puzzled mouth.  I remember
                                        (Eros)

The beach-scrub and the past contain two boys
                                        (Maps)

The boat is on the sand, the prints washed out
                                        (Obsession)

The boxer crouches like a man paying a taxi
                                        (The Blood Rules—Fear. 2)

The bullfinch, neck-deep in eyebright, passes
                                        (Scherza Rima)

The candlelight’s reflected in the glass
                                        (The Captain)

The day will come, said singing Robin
                                        (The Ballad of Singing Robin)

The gastric cavities of sacred cows
                                        (Hathor)

The gothic painters must obviously have known
                                        (Tradition)

The ground so stony, like a thing that will always occur;
                                        (The Agony in the Garden)

The market bosses and stall covers
                                        (Death in the Morning)

The moth does not like this
                                        (Moth Tartare)

The night-shift’s coming off.  The sky is brown
                                        (Power Station)

The powerful practitioners of peace
                                        (Middle East and African)

The shadows in the garden move to night
                                        (Love Story—3. Old Hands)

The Spirit of the Air has it in for the trees
                                        (The Spirit of the Air)

The stars are as they are by accident.
                                        (Elektra—She flies)

The stream runs scummy beneath the mill-walls
                                        (The Blood Rules—Light. 1)

the termite mound is a lonely enter-
                                        (Connections)

The tone of cemeteries: got by heart
                                        (Portsmouth Elegy—2. The Stone Wind)

The tumbling, acrobatic child
                                        (Risk Addicts)

The twoyear Tarzan in his little grove
                                        (Resolution)

The voyeur has a green-stocking mask
                                        (Edvard Munch)

The winter sun sets early
                                        (Pilgrim)

The wood talks, says where the nail must enter
                                        (Infernal fictions)

The yellow sun is in the leaf
                                        (The Four Seasons)
There is a goddess in the garden and she kills
                                        (Mother’s Day)
There is summer enough
                                        (Elvira Madigan)

These half-lights may soon be over
                                        (The Blood Rules—Light. 4)

They probe the taste of love, up in the alps
                                        (Après-Ski, Kinky)

This is a story told of Grettir
                                        (Glamsight)

This is the time of year they mow the heart
                                        (Prepared)

Today we crossed two jungles and two wastes
                                        (The Pain of Helena Nagel—3)

toddler
                                        (clown)

Two frozen waterfalls (or two glass walls)
                                        (De Rerum Natura)

Under the lamp, faux Art Nouveau and late
                                        (The Arcade)

Undersight is usefuller
                                        (E and D—Dorothy’s Emily-Song)

Unoccupied by sleep the infant cries
                                        (A Child Waking)

until I reach the sponge heather top
                                        (Grwyne Fawr Reservoir)

Usage is what she lives by, not a cage
                                        (Elektra—Grand’mère)

We cut arrows from hedge stems
                                        (Gang War)

We started in a pack on a level head
                                        (Long Distance)

we worshipped the moon again
                                        (It’s Time)

what green tourmaline
                                        (trinket)

What is the moon about?  It lifts aloft
                                        (Peasant Moon)

When entering the office, or when morning-after shy
                                        (Good Day)

When I and my wife first reached the tree
                                        (The Conservative)

when I finger his cock
                                        (the Alexine poems—3. my para)

When the sun’s in its meridian power
                                        (Love Story—1: First Encounter: Country)

When you accede to the nightlong city
                                        (Augury for Caesar)

Where are the girls of yesteryear
                                        (Elektra—Envoi)

While you are picking your people
                                        (Nature Study)

with a tampax
                                        (the Alexine poems)

Who goes in the electric wind, vibrating,
                                        (Elektra—Who goes)

Who knows
                                        (The Blood Rules—Prelude. 2)

Will it hold the thick drips of a harpsichord?
                                        (Waste Basket)

with a tampax
                                        (the Alexine poems—1. festering lily)

Within walls moonlit—pewter, malachite
                                        (Maximum Baby)

You are a peaceable soul.  Your moments are
                                        (A child, one day old)

You are a phantom
                                        (The Blood Rules—Pain. 2)

You lie on your back
                                        (Baby Talk)

You see from the garden night’s tree-ivy
                                        (Copstone Hall)

You the bird I the blood
                                        (The Blood Rules—Light. 2)

You thought you knew her, ordinary as yourself.
                                        (Hazlitt to Tomkins)

you wake from centuries of sleep
                                        (wanderlust)

Young muscles sweating sea-spray that dries like semen
                                        (Life-love)

Your springboard was a sea wall, dangerous
                                        (Angharad)

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