Tony Curtis is professor of poetry at the University of Glamorgan. His many
books include Album (1974), Letting Go (1983), The Last Candles (1989),
War Voices (1995) and The Arches (1999). His Selected Poems appeared in
1986. He is a former chair of Yr Academi Gymreig.






Faces

This is the last
the very last,
the fifteenth, sixteenth.
I don’t choose to count:
each face different and the same.

The still-born, the late miscarriage,
the tiny death in the incubator,
tubes removed, the support switched off.

Each imagined face I re-imagine
for the almost parents -
the Obstets people and the counsellors
are sure it helps, fixes the grief,
focuses the love.

Each failed foetus, each shrivelled life
I father-forth with paints.

Are these portraits kept in private drawers
for the special times, anniversaries,
when the pain becomes unbearable,
or are they mantlepiece, front-room wall
displayed - a sort of shared conversation of pain?

I have to stop,
to move back to my own life and vision,
for the ghosts I have conjured,
float in my dreams, ripped untimely from me.

These I never show my wife, my children.
I feel some sort of betrayal is close.
I don’t want complexion, nose,
hair to take anything from my own,
these poor dead things.








Leonids

Gone midnight, I rise
to view the promised Leonids.
Nothing.

Under a low cloud cover
that blankets the sky
at all points of the compass,
nothing.

Not a star, no moon,
just a dullness,
the street-lamps fuzzy in the thick dampness.

Once every thirty-three years
the meteor’s myriad sparks
shower onto our atmosphere and dance
light down to us in ostentatious display.
It is calculable, predictable, but appears
as random as chance.

This year they strike and spark
out of sight.
I’ll not see them now.
The coincidence of this planet’s curve
and that shining debris.

With clocks and calendars we measure
all the living moves.
In Vermont and Pembrokeshire
years ago, I remember
seeing shooting stars -
surprising and random they seemed.
And cold.

Back under the duvet
You’ve warmed a cave,
my love,
where dreams of flight unfold.