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Michael Murray |
Michael lives in east Cheshire with his family. Oh, and a plentiful host of creatures known as pets but are more like friends. These include crows, rabbits, chinchilla... You get the picture. Do you also get: no exotic holidays abroad; no money but a friendly vet...?
Fashion Tips for the New Austerity
I thought I could never be done with corduroy
but now it seems it has done with me. ‘They don’t make it,’
I catch myself saying, ‘… like they used to.’ Those underpants
were second to none, and the socks, the best.
Now suede is, well do I need to say, suede is
what corduroy could never be. On collar and cuffs
the cream. I would not give two hoots for linen.
But lace, man, I would kill for a codpiece of that,
and bum-slash inlet darts of chintzy gold against
that particular bottle green you could only once find
in sixties, admit it, corduroy....
silk shoes are tops of course, and nylon for the groin,
but nipple shells of chrome clipped with the sheer pain
of a peg clasp, and a navel flower bedded deep in the twist....
If there's any more to say about clothes for the shop floor
I would like to hear it.
Feast of the New Austerity
My hopes are praline at this time;
There is the aftertaste of white
Italian truffle –
The tincture of our days –
With bombs of flavour in the blend.
Good fortune has blessed us
It is Belgian, special, favourite.
Who is the chocolatier?
I wish to thank him.
Crass as that, I’m afraid;
And I’m afraid of that.
A rare German red: how generous,
As though you had read my mood
Expertly. Brandy
(to syrup the glass) you say, is more
Beethoven than Napoleon –
I would like to recommend
Mahler, but can’t. My gaffe.
Let this, you say, be sufficient.
I am dependent on all these –
There you go: the spell-breaker.
Summer Libretto
After Francoise Sagan
I cannot now care with what precision
I negotiated that summer, borrowing
Against time a greater sophistication
Than I could repay. If I were to ask
Forgiveness, who should I ask it of most?
A dull ache; invalid. You see my youth still:
I have aged. Ask me what you will –
I never willed a time like this;
Ask now for it will be forbidden then on.
I know this
The strength leaving me
Knows this,
The blood in my temple
Knows this.
Where once we could and did
Brave everything the future would throw
It is now we sit out what for us
Is the aftermath. Regretting nothing
Knowing in our sinews
Such things cannot be lost.
But to wake day on day and see you
At a distance, coping, do I ever
Doubt? Yes,
Then warm myself against the embers
Of what we both knew.
The pain that remains:
Angina, an acid stomach, the hole in the wallet.