Calf-deep In Water At A Street Cafe 


This city once had a different name
for years, the name of the General.
No one wants to remember it now but

you will find it when you least want to
on old maps on the second-hand bookstalls
cast-iron drain-covers, the back of the station.

The streets are hostage to a darker time
love-poems whispered on the back stairs
not printed in black and white.

Spring floods will sweep out the city's skull
that grim dust on the air
hanging in a thin sudden rain.

A drench of sun blots the page. Downstream
the old man's words form a foam on the coastal marshes
below a branch of flowering blackthorn.


Golden Goose

How did we ever get here? A Chinese dragon
formed in a mess of hot protostellar dust

no field is home
no stone is more than a shattered disc

caught in the auroral storms
of the second of September 1859, thrown from a train

I'm waiting for a wolf in the museum café
orbital motion of one arc-second per hour

there's a prickle of fear out in the west galleries
your sixth-form diaries, under glass in a dim-lit case

Nain had to lose her accent when she moved to London
"It was a terrible thing to sound Welsh then. Of course."

sticklebacks in the petrol tank, the manager wants you gone
epiphytic ferns on a sessile oak by the drover's bank

Old Brecon Bank, mackerel lines trailed into the Oort Cloud
fifteen in 1920, a generation missing

a startled hare racing through the gap between
tu mewn, tu mas, snooker on the telly

we wed a river, iron filings rearrange themselves
the palm of your hand was a map of the stars

that lost map of the forest, the one that had no core
I still need her to help me say Ystumllwynarth

there's a bear in there somewhere, Arth, Arthur
cynnu'r tân, the fire in Llŷn, we shall light such a candle

now I hear the wolf breathing on my neck, bad pixels
streaks and blobs and stress-fracture patterns

outside the museum there is literally no atmosphere
the near-zero chill of the trans-Neptunian plain, smoke

in tongues and the wolf lies down at your feet
curls around the rings that curl round your heart 



Rhiannon and the North Wind


Flash-bulb bursts in a cloud of white magnesium.
Chameleon and chemist, she has no need to rush.
Setting sun on the Irish Sea, a gentle breeze on her back.

'Faster! Faster!' the Red King cries but never catches up.
Horsemen and horses die in foam beside the road.
Her spine is set in lightly-swaying stone.

In emerald beaded backless dress and riding boots,
leafing through a satchel of Dixie seventy-eights
her shoulder-blades jut out like embryonic wings.

Zeno and Newton join the chase. A bugle calls
the hounds of heaven spring from cages on the A470.
She hasn't broken a sweat yet, leans down to pluck a flower.

Three nights the chase goes on, dropping in in relays.
Rhiannon yawns prettily, sketches the sunset on her right.
Men drop gasping to their knees in lush green Dyfed fields.

In the darkroom the print is fixed and hanging up to dry
but there in gelatin-silver she is still a frantic blur
glass plates no more than men could ever catch her.

This wild hunt decimates only the pursuers
casualties are high in erotic metaphor.
One little glance and smile behind, then on she trots.




Philosophy of Travel


is the annihilation of distance
or the echo of desire
even the concept of capital
the birth of each new day and its death
the pompous something of something else
something you never heard of
an alligator's song, a high-heeled shoe
hung on a swamp fence, ultramarine
the tinny whine that starts inside my ear
if I'm alone too long or too quiet
the money of love, the love of honey.

Four hundred miles between, I study guide books
suggest meeting one day in a cathedral town
imagine the early starts and the last trains back
the loafing of cloisters, the dunk of biscuits
the ache and the treasure, the listening
the little gifts, the brush of fingers
you know I mean the kiss. You

Geoff Sawers’ most recent publication is ‘Silver In My Mines: Peter Hay’s work for Two Rivers Press 1994-2003′(Buffalo, New York, 2022). Born in 1966, he was only diagnosed as autistic in his fifties. He lives in Reading (UK).