A HAUNTING moment from Shazea Quraishi's first book-length collection, The Art of Scratching (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95).

She was born in Pakistan, emigrated to Canada at 10, and lived in Madrid before moving to London, where she works as a writer, teacher, and translator .

GARDEN, NIGHT

I watch my father at the bookcase

fingering spines like keys

and guess at what he's taken down to read:

Wodehouse? Tennyson? Yeats?

The standard lamp throw shadows on his face

and he looks young, though it's been twenty years

and memories have taken his place.

Shouldn't he be more pale,

how ghosts appear in books?

I can't move, can only look,

the glass between us deep as a lake.

Moonlight. He turns.

Shadows fall like lace.