2 poems by Alan Baker

PSALM 30

I watch from cheap cafes every morning and night

Slush in the streets, traffic and men cleaning windscreens at lights

Tent cities in the underpass, lichen unchecked

Neither fungus nor plant deforms the statues in the market square

Who needs all that pomp and swagger? Let the lichen do its work

We do ours in soup kitchens and hostels covering 6–8% of Earth's

Land surface lichens are my companion now from sea level

To alpine elevations, abundant on bark, leaves, mosses

On paving slabs trodden by commuters, by such shall ye know them

In the brickwork and gutters, the alleys and ginnels

 PSALM 33

The blackbird that sang at my fence all the days of my summer

A tangle of metallic tones, silences too numerous to mention

Blood and feathers on the grass, lamentations and heavy metal

The past has a lot to answer for, it assembled sons and daughters

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, let a cloud dwell upon it

Thunder and acid rain in action over the Derbyshire hills

Tyre marks on the road like a memory-print of danger

I saw a chainsaw movie compete with the nightingales

___________

Alan Baker was born and raised in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and has lived in Nottingham since 1985 where he runs the poetry publisher Leafe Press. Shearsman Books will publish 'A Book of Psalms' in April.