'... highly original and beautifully balanced... It is refreshing to read poems... by British poets which make the kinds of imaginative leaps I am only used to seeing in the work of European poets' - Neil Astley

The council claim the fish have returned
but you know otherwise. For you saw things

on the river bank which contributed
nothing to the officially clean

condition of the water. You saw things
as you came up beside them with hardboiled eggs

for eyes, given movement by the current,
open-mouthed, bathing beside rubbish.

You'd dropped down at Blackfriars Bridge
or were shot in the head by some lover,

someone who has a connection to you
at any rate. This is the way of your flesh.

This is your blood. Eat. Drink. Make your peace
with the pattern of lines that brought you to this.