From Russian winter to Warwickshire spring

Trying to forget the theocratic mystique
of tartar Romanesque temples
merely a wing-span away in mind,
where a myriad twigs with clenched buds
still like spiked fur wrap the towns
and snow still grips …

We came down the lane for a pub lunch
past a sparkling spring and its trough
and pushed the churchyard gate
at Bubbenhall.

Huge angel clouds of cherry blossom
hovered above the seemly modest graves
and the chestnut’s green silk rags
hung in the sun, tenting the shades
ringing in with birdsong

“Plus que les grands palais Romains
la douceur angevine …”

And more fragrant than
the third Rome’s tapers,
the waft of bees in blossoms
by the squat square church.

Royal Agricultural Show Horses at Stoneleigh

Here come
            four huge mottled draught horses teamed
along a shaft. Toss heads and flash!
the sun off brasses and chromed chains

leaning gigantic shoulders to padded collars
close hair, brushed bright, over all
their tight strong bodies
just a tender pink tongue
wet with froth
just soft black pouches beneath
and the great horn hoofs
the bright clear eggs of eyes
in gentle fleshy sockets
small vital details
on forms massive
as tree boles passing.

Sensations of flying from Moscow to Essex

Back over Belarus going home, the ice’s
milky meniscus rimmed the scattered lakes,
furrow-banks of snow still hugged the lines of spruce.
The shores of Poland, Gdynia, and Kiel
had lazy curves of fat rivers nudging the dunes and combers
between the fleeces crowded like sheep at market.
Blue gaps of seas, and piecemeal managed islands,
at last, the Essex shores and marshes,
the fluffy green willows crowded the waterways,
a single sculler stretched and pulled below
as rhythmic as an insect waterboatman.
Entrails of curled semi-detached estates,
huddled developed land,
Victorian piles stood in parterres
and sports grounds
before the nervous flaps of the Boeing
parted and split like crows’ feathers,
sifting the air stream for our rumbling touch
and retro engine shudder.