Index of first lines

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• 1.  Heat always travels from hot to cold
• A crown gall
• A farewell kiss—and then we’re done
• A grapefruit squeezed
• A house gestated in paternal love
• A hungry old cat (Siamese)
• A spinning spider, Sputnik-fathered
• A starting point of sharp velars
• A still life, with ceramic vase
• Abyss.  A nanosecond’s blazing light
• Adrift on waters
• After the chip from the front of your grin
• All day the noise of battle rolls
• All night the March wind blows about our windows
• Almost accidental, but carefully composed
• alright: once upon a time
• Although I have long been away, I can still see
• Ambient objects surrounded me
• Amidst the tympanum
• And, hey, maybe if I continue to sing, that thing
• Another day
• Another day of fresh cigarette burns
• Another hour gone
• Are
• A-rise, you poyson’d ape, and stay the same
• As if the act of moving weren’t a chore
• At first I used to wish that I were Keats
• At first they were covered in words: critical diatribes
• At my back, like you, I always hear
• At the coinciding point of the years
• Beards seem to be out of fashion nowadays
• because I just want to scream them until I’m hoarse
• Begin the song exactly where you are
• black
• Black on white on black
• Blair
• blood ancestry
• Brought my new friend to the Poetry Group
• … but if the chicken
• By the bone-ground my eyes linger
• Came to stay one day
• Christmas day
• Coffee-stained breaths
• Coffee-stained plastic floor, its frailty tuned by too bright
• Columbo-standard
• Columbus was the beginning, caravels cresting over cor-
• Come fill the cup, we’ve little time to drink
• Come find me in a crease sea-squalls cannot reach
• cyclamen in purple bursts kiss compost
• Dear Alan
• Dear Wayne of Interpol:  I have your mail
• Defy the moon suck, Cnut unheeded
• Dirty saucers.  Damp teatowels
• Dog-days in autumn—what other days were there, really?
• . (dot)
• Doze on my arm while it fades
• Dr Foster went to Gloucester
• During these slow nine months the castle mound
• Existence was a problem
• Fin de siècle
• First I carefully let go
• First light and then first lines along the east
• Five minutes after our hearts stop
• Focus is the hinge
• For A Long Time She Stands There, Given To The Dreadful Clouds Crossing The Stars, Racing To Nowhere
• Four bare feet in the wet grass; he and she
• From Ilkley’s old stone bridge I trace a path
• From random junctures in primeval winds
• Fur     fire    and we are safe against the cold, cold night
• Further in, the darkness is absolute
• Good time for it, autumn
• HAMLET Do you see that cloud?  That’s almost in shape like a camel
• He is an island offshore
• Her hand rests on her now vacant stomach
• Her walking-stick is a divining-rod
• Here’s to failure, here’s to fear
• He’s sound
• Hidden behind the candyfloss burps of hey and how are you
• Higgledy Piggledy
• High above desk-jockey Cardiff
• High up above, at the edges of the air
• Horse hooves sunk deep into sticky clay
• Hot
• How are you?
• I am almost 25 years old.  I cannot remember a time
• I blame my mother, Zeus bless her
• I catch myself thinking while writing ‘is this the poem?’
• I could die here, I think
• I don’t know what makes art Art
• I don’t wish to cast any aspersions
• “I drew a line under you today.”
• I fear I am not in my perfect mind
• I fell into it by accident
• I have tried
• I hold the hazy shades at bay
• I imagine he’d wear my armour well
• I, in the belly of the whale fast
• I keep remembering today
• I live!  Un-ownable, not made: revealed
• I often think of that January morning together, dreaming
• I should have known by now, this feeling
• I taste the hum of pub chatter
• I think we have to conclude
• I thought I understood you once,
• I thought Nick old
• I translate Greek words from a slab of stone
• I whispered my name into the trees
• I wondered if
• If I could show you how I love you with this poem
• I’m perched inside an open window
• I’m thinking up a theory to explain it
• In my Grandmother’s homeland
• In the beat of a pun
• In the beginning
• Inspiration, lava of the imagination
• Is it a memory or another dream
• It clucked, and spat at the best of both worlds
• It is 8:11 in my bathroom a Thursday
• It was a strange attraction
• It was just a small fish, refracting the gold of a sunbeam
• It would be wise to stop scratching now
• Jonathan’s deathbed was strewn with salvation in
• La belle dame shivers in the shadows
• Listen, kid: are you, or are you not
• Look at you—born of halves and fulls
• Love sent you to the desert’s hush-parched silence
• Love set you going like a fat gold clock (watch!) ticking
• Lover, the years have fine timing, or fine luck, I’ve noticed
• “Make yourself at home”
• Manhattan’s built on blocks because they planned it out like that
• Master of love and much-loved mystery, in short
• Maybe it’s just the latent sign
• Metallic disks land on a surface
• Mind the gap
• Miscellanea, fool’s gold, bric-a-brac
• Monday night, the tv on
• My face is old now, frost and snow
• My grandad tended to old men when young
• My Grandmother sits in the corner
• My home, my space
• My mother always said, “one day you might
• My sign is Aries.  Though it seems a poor
• My sixtieth birthday is nearing
• My thoughts are a maelstrom, a cacophony
• Nameless faces tell us we’re going to war
• Neither fur, feathers nor scales ever clad
• No point, she said, in keeping the old girls
• No school today.  Miss cannot teach us Greek
• O
• Oh, and to freeze this
• Oh take me back to the start
• “Oh work
• Once upon a time
• One could not take her painting very seriously
• Oppression’s language does not understand
• Our break-up has been roiling now for more
• Our house is in darkness
• Passing Fall in tattooed cold
• Penthoused
• Personification of God’s idle perfection
• Pianissimo
• Poets have been silent about cheese
• Raisins are all very well in their place
• Red and white lights guide their journey
• Red-hot and tear-kissed under mask
• Respite, (n):  A feeling that sinks
• Rush hour and my fear for how I would
• Sat behind the counter
• Scarlet skins and serpent leaves
• Scientist says: meme for belief in life after death
• Sedimentary; discarded sleeves and scarves
• She points to the sky
• Sheets of water laminate the windows
• So much happens that we miss or forget
• So snow falls outside
• So the moon was there, hanging low in the sky
• Someday make a journey through the rain
• Somewhere on the mantelpiece inside your house
• Summon the summoners, the twenty-six
• Teetering on the edge of
• …The anticipated ending stretches forward, dripping hungrily on the path
• The ballot-slips are counted in
• The box arrived
• The day breaks slowly on the hills of green
• The dead letter office is closing down
• The door of the south
• The ghost of the impact, white on the window
• The girl poised and primed
• The Girton oak has developed a burr
• The good Lady Lumley is pondering glumly.  “I
• The heart trips and is under way
• the imprint’s still there but it just doesn’t feel like home anymore
• the man
• The moon is no longer my goddess
• the morning after
• The plaintive notes of accordion-song on the waters
• The room was plainness and preparedness
• The sash rattles up
• The spirit of gorse
• The sun flattened
• The tank commander, aiming well
• the typist puts her knickers on
• The void between our wishes
• The world moves the same
• The wormholes lead us if we dare
• “the yellow bus had stopped
• There are pagan echoes
• There is a forty-one year tale to tell
• There is a picture of you that we love,
• There is something
• There was a war
• There was an old Fellow of Girton
• They found him, petrified
• they prefer to sing in languages they cannot speak
• They saw him walking in the meadow
• This Easter Sunday was the first
• This question was generally quite poorly attempted, with many candidates not able to understand fully the situation being studied.  A large proportion of candidates only attempted the first part and were unable to earn any of the marks.  Of the rest many did not progress beyond the second part, with many simply claiming incorrectly that the second derivative of xx is aa and the second derivative of yy is -gg
• This year it snows on Boxing Day
• Through doors of luminescent playfulness
• time rolls up like a woodlouse and the skies
• To write on nature is always ironic
• Trading futures on the wishing bone
• Transport yourself to the moment when these immortal words spilled from the Shakespearean pen
• Trying to make you love me again
• ‘Two Hard’, too hard
• Untimely winds in sixteen forty-five
• Voices far across the valley sound
• Wake
• Wake as three screams take
• Wake me up to the smell of smoke
• Walcott begins Omeros with cutting down some cedars
• We are not alone.  The apple core
• We must not speak now of etherised spread-
• We sing waes hael, waes hael, hurrah! hurrah!
• We take the path beside the wood—the fir
• We wake up to Radio 3
• We went driving in your parents’ car
• We won’t give up our love, it is a given
• Welcome to absence, these open
• Wend your way
• What have we done in this, our darkest night?
• What news borne on the wind?
• When I write a line I wonder
• While the nilherds are snoring
• With domes at our backs
• Yawn
• Yes, there will be more
• You always said you’d sooner chew nettles
• You could I never love.  Built of a bulk
• You have not turned to stone
• Your eyes are filled with wonder as they gaze
• your eyes, weighted, watch the glass
• Your glance is like a blessing on the broken
• your whispered words hushed round
• You’re obtuse—and a pain.  Now PLEASE listen again