Michael Shepherd Poems

Bonding, but not binding…
now, there’s true love, for you…
fondly done by finding
what joins you for true…
...

‘I love him – that’s why we’re together…’

‘I love her too – but sometimes
we drive each other up the wall…’
...

A clerke there was, one Tomas Elyot hight;
‘Stearns’ wasse hys middel name; I think him so;
His gowne a cutte severe, sterne, clericale.
Hie werkéd in a banke; but lyked it not;
...

The boy walks past the window;
you can see he's
got something clearly in his mind;
walks firmly on both feet as if
...

Death
could be full of surprises.
I'm not Irish; but if you were to do
the full Irish thing - take my corpse out of the coffin,
...

Into this quiet room; with sweet relief
the sense of oneness with oneself returns;
the glorious, restless world no longer thief
through thought, of all that for that oneness yearns;
...

London, six o'clock in June, two-o-o-five:

These streets were built in nineteen-five or thereabouts
in unimaginative grid, on London clay and previous watercress beds
...

‘So tell me, Michael…’
the voice is slow and measured,
that of one used to public speaking,
his words so significant that the audience
...

Too young to know the horrors of a war I've fought,
too young to know war's fear, or yearn for heroism,
but old enough to have lived through;
boys but one year older than myself
...