John Welch

1: On Murder Mile



                            from where
a voice of great purity it
                                     sometimes descends

the cashpoint queue
                               a shield of
water reflecting the clouds
it's as if you were stepping over
the shallow face of a god

their business it is to be out
there's the girl with the copper hair

a barrenness of waiting buds
silence — it's just before the explosion

his life carefully balanced
like the hat on his head

                               Lower Clapton Road


So it came
           to this poor ground

Maybe there are quite different bits of you
Climbing    from one to the other
And something else lights up —
It climbs itself and
Here it is
Its arms spread wide

Walking the
Self,    a history
And 'here', it is is simply
The way its breath divides the air

A cool arch
                  instep
The words collect in
As if as if as if


I will walk slowly back in there
Anxious not to disturb the dust —
The differing bits of 'you'
Are all the silences inside


That feeling    of overpowering strangeness
It was like a perverse gift
                                          Is it a child
Wondering if he's special?

Troubled    ecstasy of the self
Ek stasis    is standing outside?

But who was the stranger at the door
London in a blaze behind me
Blitz recalled in a dream
Dreamt more than fifty years ago?

There is nothing fixed in your eye
A shadow that prints itself

Leans forward into it    the amazing flesh