from The Sundial
The Sundial Journey Snow on the MountainBlaen CwrtBaby-Sitting CalfNightrideCatrin Still Life Storwm Awst Death of a Young Woman Swinging Lunchtime Lecture Dyddgu Replies to Dafydd At Ystrad Fflûr Railway Tracks Foghorns Curlew Burning Nettles Last Rites Harvest at Mynachlog ClywedogChoughs St Thomas’s Day
from Letter from a Far CountryWhite RosesReturn to Login Miracle on St David’s Day East Moors Scything Jac Codi Baw Ram Buzzard Friesian Bull Sunday Taid’s Funeral Letter from a Far Country Kingfishers at CondatSeamstress at St LéonLes Grottes Heron at Port Talbot Suicide on Pentwyn BridgePlums Death of a Cat Cardiff ElmsSheila na Gig at KilpeckSiege Lly^r Blodeuwedd Shadows in Llanbadarn The Water-Diviner
from Selected PoemsSyphoning the Spring A Dream of Horses OctoberClimbing Cader IdrisCastell y BereToday Taid’s Grave Tadzekistan Shearing
from Letting in the RumourAt One Thousand Feet Neighbours Windmill Listening for TrainsStormSeal Ichthyosaur Cold Knap LakeApplesOrangesFires on Lly^nTalking of Burnings in Walter Savage Landor’s SmithyBorder Post Script MargedOverheard in County SligoShawl My Box Falling RoadblockBinaryThe Hare Hare in JulyTrophy The Rothko RoomRed Poppy FebruaryGannet Night FlyingIn JanuaryTory Party Conference, Bournemouth, 1986 Times like These Slate Mine Roofing Hearthstone Pipistrelle Fulmarus Glacialis Racing PigeonMagpie in Snow Tawny OwlPeregrine Falcon Clocks Cofiant
from The King of Britain’s DaughterBlood Musician The ListenersAnorexicThe Vet Baltic Hölderlin in Tubingen The PoetWild Sound Swimming with SealsLurcher LamentNo Hands Olwen Takes Her First Steps on the Word Processor in Time of WarEclipse of the MoonAdvent The LighthouseOn Air Wind Gauge Grave GodThe Angelus Family HouseStealing Peas Sunday Breakers Yard The LoftHay Beudy Walking on Water The West Window of York Minster St Winefride’s Well Coming Home The Wind-Chimes The King of Britain’s Daughter
Index of titles Index of first lines

Coming Homeafter teaching a poetry course
A week away and I’m coming home.At five the car breaks dawn in a surf of balsam,untangles the hill, the lanes, the B-roads.Stone towns of northern England stirfor the milk and the post.
Bill, his dying wife in his arms a month ago:Lincolnshire spreads fields of widening goldabout his empty house, sons, daughters,grandchildren in the sleeping farms,her shadow cooling in the double bed.
The motorway straightens through the eyes of bridges.Dawn burns off its gasses over Manchester,and Sarah’s broken childhood bleeds again,her father’s love gone sour and retracted to a vicethat turns the safe-house dead, and blind, and mute.
South on the M6, sunrise in my mirrordazzles with tears the distant border country.Into Wales, and for once I dare drive fastwhere the road steps off between mountains into air,Glaslyn blue and silk beyond it.
Jane with her love simpler than marriageand all pain lost in the simple fact of it,her body a harp now that the wind stirs.Tracey, half a mind on poetry, half on visions,still frail as glass from the doctor’s silences.
Home through waking villages, Bala yawns and rises.Llyn Tegid takes a white sail in its palm.Anne, after lifelong marriage, keeps house alone,its rooms about her like his shrugged-off coat,rehearses in my mind our house, one day.
The lane narrows and turns between sunburnt fields.Two hundred miles behind me, you at the doorrising for breakfast, a late dream in your eyes.The slate’s already hot. The bees are in the fuchsia.A rug of sunlight’s on the bedroom floor, oursand the widower’s bed spread cool for homecoming.