Within their frame
blue hills reflect old-fashioned calm
when every moment stands unique.

The frames that held this art in place
are shattered now, and chaos lives;
yet order still can speak to us,
offer perhaps a touch of grace.
    
                      from 'Ullswater Pastoral'

Brian Cox's latest collection speaks with the quietly assured authority of a lifetime's consideration of the arts of writing and living. Humane, humorous and acute, Cox's poetry honours the pleasures of home and holidays and friends, much-loved books and places, as the foundations of the civilised life, making endurable the pain and grief that are an inevitable part of it. In language that is precise, plain and lucid, these are poems whose hope and humanity continue to resonate.

Contents

 

Introduction  9

 

Shakespeare’s Dream        13

Fox            14

Aboard the Anacoluthe 15

Moselle to the Rhine          17

La Villa Romaine Hotel, Carsac        18

Talmont on the Gironde      20

Canoe for Two    21

Canoe Again 23

Châtel-Guyon    24

Okefenokee 25

St Paul’s Bay, Malta          27

Ephesus      28

Hermit        29

Doves         31

Jester          32

Ullswater Pastoral      33

Goblet        34

Cantaloupe 35

Old People Waking       36

Borges and Wordsworth 37

Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through theAction of Worms (1881)   38

English Fowler    39

The Path toRome         40

Louis de Bernières: Birds Without Wings         42

GreatExpectations    44

Dickens’s Fool and Saint    45

Tolstoy’s Levin    46

Tolstoy’s Oak    47

Seth’s TwoLives          48

Pride andPrejudice: The Film            49

Privacy       50

Hospital      51

Prostate      52

Cheshire Walks    53

Reservoir    54

The Edge    55

Lake District 56

Flushes       57

Manchester United        58

Old Trafford 59

Sensation    60

Photographs 61

Jane Eyre in Derbyshire  62

End Game  63

Orhan Pamuk: MyName is Red            64