Malcolm Wheatman

Now the world is almost dark
You ask what colour are your eyes? ...
The colour of the night I see reflected there,
Tinged with hues of sorrow and of joy;
...

In gathering twilight here sit you and I.
Insects hang on meditating air
And summer's peopled memories cloud the eye.
Eventually the sun
...

Without red flags, communication cords,
A Lakeland poet, well worth his words,
Once persevered and, for his pains,
He stopped the approaching Grasmere trains.
...

'There's a fly in my tea, ' said I,
Trying to catch the waitress's eye.
Eventually she came, but upset my cup,
And sullenly asked, 'Whatever's up? '
...

Beside a set of three large bottle banks
(Marked neatly, 'Green', 'Brown', 'Clear')
A wino sits, obiquely-eyed, with legs astride,
A large box, empty, by his side,
...

Between the midnight marble stones
That mark the rest of noble bones,
I saw some humble wooden crosses.
Could there be, among the bosses,
...

Astronomers look
Back in time... at those looking
Back in time at them?
...

At opposite ends
Of beams of light, here sit I
And the Universe.
...

They say that when you die
Your soul ascends, and by and by
You're high up in the wide, wide sky.
...

My spllng, nt gd,
Md my pms clr s md
nd widly msndrstd.
Tryng Wrd prcssng thn prvd
...

Did God invent the 'Finish it Tomorrow' ploy? You know the one...
That all-purpose excuse we trot out with silly grins and
Sidle down to the pub, putting off the end of that DIY job we took on.
Did He say, on that Sixth Day, 'I've nearly done. Just now I'm fed
...

At the bookshop there's a banquet. Another romantic-novelist signs
Her new book. The clamouring crowd, hungry for her latest heroine,
Buy her sickly mille-feuilles. Need for her words hardly declines
As she scrawls more in front of her hundred thousand. But by a shelf
...

On the horizon
Silhouetted oak arms wave,
Conducting the wind.
...

Milton and Tennyson - no fools,
Likely went to public schools
Where, not by their own designs
When forced to write a hundred lines,
...

Under the wide and starry eye
Of one I've loved since time gone by...
Glad I'd have heard her glady sigh
As she lay me down with a will.
...

In a jaded cocktail lounge a clutch of older girls,
Never wives, who once perhaps played hard-to-get,
Now sidle round the corners of the passing years
And pour themselves into their drinks.
...

You can take horses
To water, but pencils must
Be self-propelling.
...

On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:
Twelve days to get out of her life.
...

There's no more touching sight than
To witness young love first come to a man...
To see his wistful vacant stare,
To see him walk as if on air;
...

The embryo cells
Divide; and in so doing
They have multiplied.
...