My grandson is non-verbal curled up behind the wall his beast is there asleep but not asleep in silence it grunts and snorts and moans he prods it into dancing at the abstract heart of words it hears the sound of music; and we send words across a different kind of distance; stood at his foggy window he sends us blurry signs from a language Legoland where his beast still stamps on syntax.
From a sequence taking all its titles from the poems of W.S. Graham. Kathleen McPhilemy’s most recent poetry collection is The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis, London 2004). She lives in Oxford.