Richard Adams Poems

No bags, no passport, no sun, sea or sky,
No swimming at dawn or stars at midnight,
No mountains or valleys, no beach or forest,
No exotic fruits or wood-smoke on the breeze.
...

Just in case death comes to me unawares,
I’d like to let you know that there’s nothing as comforting as sure and certain hope.
Nothing that you can’t see the funny side of, or the tragic;
Nothing that pulls you under so far you never come up,
...

I was imagining you, after a long and tiring flight,
In that warm, unfamiliar, African air, heavy with rain.
Those wide, ancient, horizons;
The sense of something completely different,
...