The word English is wet. It has rained
recently and it works like a smashed
grape; not wine but the lamp-light quality
of its flesh under sunlight. England is the seed.

English is open as a French door or a
louvre, a popular inlet, the rich surface
of a moist garden.

England is the dusty rusted statue, it is
rock and hope, a long meal, the finality
of coastlines or death. It is a truthful
word unlike love or kind more like plate
or map or gun.

English is what we learnt today, is a
glass with the remains – the sticky pink of
fresh strawberries; it is a Japanese gift
wrapped carefully and opened in Brazil
with good drunk company.

England's shape betrays a party.

       Once in a dream I woke with a taste
       in my mouth and later knew it as a
       word and used it in the next 6 poems.
       It hung in the sky like a slipstream
       and settled in the trees like fog or mist.

I'd spent the day at the coast in the
south, and we were looking out over the
water and it was my birthday and the
weather was fine. I'd taken a bottle of
wine and two glasses and afterwards we
threw them into the sea from the tall
vanilla headland near Eastbourne.