Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne in 1949. He moved to the UK in 2006 and currently lives in Faversham. His most recent books are Crab & Winkle (Shearsman, 2009), a new edition of The Epigrams of Martial (Boston, Pressed Wafer, 2010), Allotments (Wendell, Mass., Fewer & Further, 2011) and The Pursuit of Happiness (Shearsman, 2012). Forthcoming are The Complete Blue Hills (Puncher & Wattman, Sydney), and Leaving Here (Light-Trap, Brisbane).

Allotment #33

life in the margin:
spring, still winter-like

old men in trainers
walk on bunions

Allotment #34

back at The Sun
(beyond the . . .

I graph all this, with flattened accent
(drawn but not glottal)

(the test: ‘This is Illyria, lady’)

(I myself am a bracket,
a footnote
but this is as it should be

the smudge of a glass
set down on paper

this     this     this

Allotment #35

the impression of a bottle cut into a wall
above it a trophy (a crown or a hand,
hard to tell in the half-dark

Allotment #36

a morning frost, bent stems
then a clear sky,
ongoing chores

Allotment #37

shadows in the window
seeming people,
spaces between
a flame’s reflection

nails not quite hammered in

a rattle of cutlery

the mechanics of a worn philosophy

my work irrelevant as
an immense puzzle, lifelong