Michael Shepherd Poems

This is the illicit still of poetry
half hidden in the dry ditch beyond the hedge
firewater drunk from an old tin mug
it takes the skin off your throat
...

Weary with the day,
it called to me

as if someone said, here…
...

Statistics tell. You can be
independent of them, but
you cannot deny them.
...

Yes, how were they to know,
searching in the heat of forenoon dunes,
those high hills of sand
where once the forests grew,
...

This starry dawn - the wise men yet afar -
the shepherds are abed, their night's task done.
Is Mary tired? Or, as one untouched?
All birth's a miracle; not less this one.
...

See this fine manuscript
so beautifully illuminated round the picture –

why, it’s none other than Kabir!
...

Oh the dark, dark otherness of others!
that brings on, such sadness, such despair…
deep, vast chasm in the heart…
...

The great Hamburg football team
is to lay out a cemetery for supporters
next to its pitch – in the form, of course,
of another pitch whose grass
...

I will create you,
I shall name you;
...

Suppose a smile.

Suppose it always, with a smile.
...