I am pretty much a stranger to this respected and admired writer, translator and poet. Together with my wife Joy we have come to listen to David Constantine with Michelle Green discussing recent writing under the banner of 'Writing From Conflict' Michell Green's fiction is based on her experiences as an international aid worker. David Constantine read his short story 'Asylum' written in response to the humanitarian plight of refugees, a subject with traction right now. I bought a copy of David's novel about relationships, discovery and loss called 'The Life Writer' and he is signing it in my picture. I am not an absolutely new reader as from time to time I see his poetry in The Rialto. Here is his poem:

BAD DREAM

There was a path, the familiar path, the one I’ve very often not yet ventured on Around a mountainside, cut level, a sheer Fall right, a sheer wall left, a ledge a pair Might amble hand in hand on round the contour And there you were, not you, nearest the wall And there was I, not I, nearest the fall And you were your age, but the hair was wrong I looked like me but many years too young And on a bend where the path swung out of view I, less and less myself, halted with the almost you, And on the brink, for fun or she dared him to, He balanced his arms dead level and stood there On his left foot and over the empty air Raised level his right and so he stood Lean steady spirit level of my blood Over emptiness. You laughed, the pair of you And laughing hand in hand passed out of view. On hands and knees, the ledge very narrow now, I shouted after us, your name, my own. Yours fled my lips to claim you, like a swallow. Mine fell between my cold hands, like a stone.