Listener. Lemn Sissay

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      ‘To go step by step we begin with the personal pronouns and the verb “to be”.’

      Semere Woldegabir, Amharic for Foreigners

      ‘If, as Marx said, religion is the opiate of the people, then nationalism is the crack cocaine.’

      Gaiem Kibreab, Birkbeck College, May 2008

      CONTENTS

      Let There Be Peace

      Rain

      The Actor’s Voice

      Patterns

      Moving Target

      Laying the Table

      Perfect

      Gambian Holiday Maker

      Listener

      Ricochet

      Documentary

      Every Day Living

      Email

      Elephant in the Room

      Architecture

      The Letter

      Molasses and Long Shadows

      Moving Mountains

      Manchester Piccadilly

      Remembering the Good Times We Never Had

      Some Things I Like

      The Man in the Hospital

      * * * * This

      The Lost Key

      Magpie

      Before We Get Into This

      Doris

      Flags

      Intimate Anger

      Advice for the Living

      In the Kingdom of the Blind

      Inspiration

      Olympic Invocation

      Salt Mind

      Signs

      The Shadow of the Laburnum

      The Battle of Adwa, 1896

      The Gilt of Cain

      Applecart Art

      I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead

      Transistor

      This Train (Sing Along)

      Molten

      Horizons

      Dei Miracole

      Christmas

      Catching Numbers

      Red Sky Dawn

      Winter: Shepherd’s Warning

      Spring: Mayday Mayday

      Summer: Mountain Top

      Autumn: Lost Bronze

      Barley Field

      The Boxer

      Time Bomb

      Torch

       The Queen’s Speech

      Summer of Love: A Year in Black and White

      Acknowledgements

       LET THERE BE PEACE

      Let there be peace

      So frowns fly away like albatross

      And skeletons foxtrot from cupboards;

      So war correspondents become travel show presenters

      And magpies bring back lost property,

      Children, engagement rings, broken things.

      Let there be peace

      So storms can go out to sea to be

      Angry and return to me calm;

      So the broken can rise and dance in the hospitals.

      Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of flats

      Peer through his window and see Addis before him

      So his thrilled outstretched arms become frames

      For his dreams.

      Let there be peace.

      Let tears evaporate to form clouds, cleanse themselves

      And fall into reservoirs of drinking water.

      Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt

      In the dark pupils of a child’s eyes

      And disappear like shoals of darting silver fish.

      And let the waves reach the shore with a

      Shhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhh.

       RAIN

       THE ACTOR’S VOICE

      This is a celebration of sound,

      Of words said after the phone’s put down,

      After the door’s shut at the editor’s cut –

      Of thoughts held after the word ‘but…’

      This is the sound. The actor’s sound.

      Of inflections after the flick of ash,

      Before the crash, before the whiplash;

      Of thoughts collecting before they arrive,

      Of the deep breath before the dive.

      This is the sound,

      Of tender fingers in a clenched fist,

      Of the wind carrying an invisible kiss,

      Of a secret unfolding wish,

      Before the candle blows like a lisp.

      This is a celebration of sound,

      Of words said after the phone’s put down,

      After the door’s shut at the editor’s cut –

      Thoughts said after the word ‘but …’

      Thoughts caught between the lines –

      The reading sounds of needing minds.

      This is the sound of beneath the laugh,

      Beneath the draft, beneath the craft –

      The space between the paragraphs,

      The pause between the polygraph,

      The actor acting out of her skin,

      The sound of shedding sins.

      The sound of spirit, the sound of soul,

      The sound of heat, the sound of old

      Dreams fading, reawakening time;

      Of hope breaking the mould of mind,

      Of the beat before the hands clap,

      The click, the clack, the trip, the trap;

      The