Fact: a bright British lad, by name J.Crook

then Thomas Nagel took it upwith philosophic thirst;What is it like to be a bat?Who knows? Bats aren’t so chatty…but if you asked a bat, I guesshe’d say, ‘Well.. kinda batty..’*(Written to mark the impending publication of the great man’s essays, ‘Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament’)

shall cover with our writingturns now, overhead, in strange hands.We feel the sweep of it like a wind.We see the brightness of a new pagewhere everything yet can happen.Unmoved by us, the fates take its measureand look at one another, saying nothing.And we write.(Following Rilke’s poem I,8 in his ‘Book of Hours’)

a finger nail will lift. Beneath the surface,atoms, molecules, tension and release,law and freedom play out a dramawhich the teacup does not know or tell.And so, much else. All. And so the mind.As if, webcamming the family at play,the screen jumpcuts, plays on the screenyour inner life for all to see; the family freeze, cold,open-mouthed…Two…

If a simple man can be happy,then happiness is possible.If a happy man can be wise,then wisdom is possible.If a wise man can be simple,then happiness is possible.How light the clouds,how blue the sky, today!

of their next life. So I’m sitting here on a fine Sundayin a quiet London suburb, the very day when the geraniumshave decided that they and the sun are intoa long-term relationship, sitting wondering whetherI’d like to be an American poet next time around.It seems on the surface very tempting:for economic survival, teaching creative writingin…

whose numbers I cannot countand would not wish to know;who seldom know each other;and perhaps, that’s just as well..who, in their dressing-gowns on Christmas morn,amid bright wrappings hasty torn,and exclamations…fall suddenly quiet,are far, somewhere else for several moments;return, and look silently in thought, deeply,at partner, children; their eyesnow a little more shining than they were..or…