I liked it when my arse was
                tickled with a feather by
                                Botticelli virgins
                                                in a knocking shop,

Assemble what you need--bamboo,
Brown paper, string, a pot of glue,
Feathers from Highland capercaillies,
Gut from guitars or ukuleles,
Stout cardboard, twenty small brass screws,

I knew what I knew
And I knew it was you
With the eyes of a child and a heart untrue,
Because, because
Of the way it was
Down Oz when times were wild.

She bit his head off but he had it coming.
He was unfit to live. He had to die.
Blood cakes the calendar. The air is humming.
She tore his head clean off. He had it coming.
The sun is silent and the night is drumming.
The night calls out for Justice. Tooth and eye
Compels this blessed hammer of the Lord
Whose instruments are Fire and the Sword.

The tiny bones of children in a cupboard,
The ghost of Garbo knitting in the chair
Beside your bed, the rocking of the eggshells,
Descending dust that glitters on the air,

I never start with an idea, or I nearly never do. Poems are made up of words, not ideas, just as paintings are made up of paint, not subjects. I don't care too much about meaning, but a lot about sound and image. Meaning is where prose lives. "A green thought in a green shade." What does that mean? Or, come to that, Larkin's "Such attics cleared of me. Such absences." Or Wallace Stevens' marvellous incantation about Tehuantapec.

The world where I live is the world that I make,
And the world that I make is the world that I wish,
And the world that I wish is the road that I take,
That I take to the dark of an underground lake,
And the answer to this is a fish, is a fish,
And the answer to this is a fish.

Antique and frantic and antediluvian,
Monument massive, impassive, magnificent,
Rich as the Inca, the golden Peruvian,
Omnidirectional, omnibenificent,

John Whitworth reads two poems, "Aaargh" and "As Tall As Trees" at the 2012 Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival. Credit to Magarida Malarkey and Sarah Lawrence College.