Prelude Snow has settled in the lines of an old ridge-&-furrow system striping the gently sloping dark green fields, an engrossed script of duration, recurrence, authority. At which that calm baby in the self that finds it so difficult to speak lowers an eyelid on the shrinking day and suddenly says outright the entire brochure of love and all: Stay here before you fall.

PETER RILEY

Next I move 200 books like ancestral skulls from Here to there in boxes. What in the day Tells us what we are for? The snow thrown Against the valley side, the grey Lumps of snow stuck under the grass tufts, Blatant Northern silence and obstinacy. Thin lines of supply toiling across The damaged hills, a constant roar, an empty tree. As if it mattered what colour we ate. Battered And resolute, resisting the cold refusal to live, Fear of ease and pleasure and the buried Theatre of love we continue, as if it mattered Whether the poem rhymed, whether we live Or die, resisting the arts of silence.

PETER RILEY