by Pam Crane
A nimble princess is
Sewing music on the expectant air
precisely drawing a thread
of harmony through holes in the audience …
Every ear will leave embroidered
in the end,
A good mantle of unfamiliar flowers
unfold a coherent
grace
over translated London
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FAIR GAME
(to Cat)
Absorbing into my body a thing off a tree
I am as much a predator as you who leave
On the threshold of my advanced and intricate nest
Another half-chewed bloody creature,
Proof of your equality with me.
In fact, superior -
I cannot consume raw blood, bone, fur, feather;
My meat is twice-killed with knife and fire,
I share with your flying prey a taste and need
For safety; the free gift; the sweet wet death-wish
Bribing thieves to pass without violation
And carry life for the tree.
The vulnerable use me.
You have the advantage, little beast, my solace.
I am allowed to share your residence; I cannot choose
To warm my lap with you, only accept
Your own usage of me as a bed as I eat pears
And remember, as we in fear have learned to remember,
That your sire would have killed mine in the forest.
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PARADOX
The indolent boy
dances into a battle of string
because he cannot help
being graceful
with his wrist and nice knee-strength
he tames the wild length
and make tortuous knots tight
with fingers of flying light
The solid conflict
defines his mortality.
The dance? -
It is a bewitching thing
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A PILGRIMAGE
Forgive me my long absence.
I have come back now in search of my past.
I came through the wide sweep of timeless fields
(Too late for the mid-honey small of barley ripening,
The swathes are raped, and marched in stooks up the fields)
To my love-town, working from the perimeter
Into its heart. That beat more fitful now.
The coffee is good, rich with the germ of memory;
Giovanni swings his hips at a younger breed,
However; the feverish songs are not the same,
And they have all gone - impossible loves of mine.
Gone to their private universe that runs
Parallel with my own; but where? The past wove
And forked in strands, leaving my own thread
To mingle with fresh loops of itinerant colour.
Alone I return, occasional pilgrim.
Back to the loved meeting and parting place
To test its memory of me.
The plain,
The sheep-fields, river and houses still
Swim under the belly of the sky;
Still blows the mad Midland wind.
I hear the sea rise among the cabbages,
The wheat seething with sand (that image still),
The dull turmoil of wind around my ears.
If it could blow time from the rain-red earth
And bring back the ice-cream harvest, I
Would forfeit a dozen later loves. But this
Grey gale has no pity for dreams;
It drives me from my sad and empty Mecca,
No song scaling the active walls of wind
That never kept me, once, from what I loved.
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LINEAGE
On some long gone but so real Saxon's account, I'm here.
You're here, Mother; a mad Irishman
Wanting his oats one day did it, and set the precedent
Like the dry little active Jew that started Dad ...
Dust of so many bricks in a new building!
Sweet Life - the grass smelt of worms, the long air
Was amove with sun, and our birds' begetters sang
When the thoughtless stroke fell (in so bland a season!)
With the sun in the right place;
The generations
That rushed then to the stairs of immortal life!
Oh, what a wonder.
And so the increscent fugue followed and followed
From the first love-music ever made,
The first chord struck on that cello-creature
That sent vibrations down the centuries
Into the gay duet that we have played!
- My little dear:
On some long gone but so real Saxon's account, you're here.
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FOR KIPPER
Kitten grew; flowered slow like a hot cinder
In smoke and flame. Summer and she were born together.
Perfect now, she teaches me to read behind her
Pure eyes the mysteries of her race. Weather
Excites her! Steeple-chasing the wind, she and I
Risk body and soul to delight the appraising sky.
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THE NIGHT HUNTRESS
In the tangled churchyard
At the dead of night
Creeping through the shadows
Flattened out of sight
Prowling like a lioness
Mistress of the wilderness
Slinks a scrap of furriness
Muscles tense and tight
Glowing through the darkness
Emerald eyes alight
Doggedly the kitten
Keeps her prey in sight
On small silken stealthy paws
Noiseless nearer still she draws
Pounces swift with needle claws
But her moth takes flight
Bounding through the grasses
Arcing over roots
Valiantly the kitten
Dashes in pursuit
Tiny grey thing in the night
Silent shred of ghost in flight
Teasing lilts from left to right
Nimble as a flute
Through the darkling shadows
Under star-pricked skies
Homeward pads the huntress
Triumph in her eyes
Moth has fluttered far away
Into hiding for the day
She has found another prey
Mouse! A peerless prize
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HEARTSEASE
Though Hearts-ease lasts until the autumn only,
When the leaves fall,
Heart’s ease stays with us throughout the year
So that sweet memories we may recall
Of the little wild pansy
Beloved of all.
(Lowfell, 1950, age 7. My very first poem.)
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FOR AN AUTUMN WEDDING
All is prepared.
The slow white wedding-march of clouds,
Sweeping the late leaves with skirts of rain,
Have spread you a bright carpet in celebration.
See, as you come,
Golden slippers of sun run in the woodland,
Lighting candles amidst the vaulting shade
To make you a church of many aisles and altars.
Listen together;
The wind’s fine fingers fly on the organ.
There are bells in the birds’ full throats for you,
The leaves fall to their own gentle music.
Their light kiss
Upon your hair is of life and death; they speak
With the ancient forest voice whose wisdom flows
In root and seed, fed by the grey rain.
Listen, and learn;
How th
e brown earth, laced with a veil of leaves,
Makes many weddings; death is a season’s sleep,
Life a recurring dream from that rich bed.
You are consumed
Like leaves, gold in your every changing season,
Dancing through lives and deaths, an immortal vein
Of past selves ripening in the dark
To nurture spring.
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GIRLS WITH GOLDEN HAIR
Girls with golden hair were
Meant to stand in the flowing corn
Slender as the wheatstalks
They stand among
Between earth and cloud
Pale in the lissom wind their long
Hair showered with finely
Flying seed
To walk in the ripened year
Bearing golden before them a swelling
Legacy of secret
Eyes that saw them
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SPRING AGAIN
Having done Spring to death - forever, I thought,
Amen - it poked a mauve nose out of the grass at me,
Winked a gold eye, and Became.
With little eddies of lust awhirl in the March wind
Around the knees, frisking fresh girls out walking
Tip-toe, tongues out they and the sky still
For a taste, for a thrill of snow; cool,
Baby, can’t kick the habit!
Will stick my nose soon into a bud of wet lilac
(We’ll gather lilacs in the Spring again
When your incessant runabout breaks down
Or one of your old, old ladies, waltzing gaily
Out of a doorful of roses,
Trips you with a giggle and sprouting stick)
Oh soon we’ll roll in faggots of crushed lavender,
And go without umbrellas in the rain,
Again!
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SPRING-CLEAN
Spring wind. Fever wind. Wowy round the roof-tops.
Wind.
Blood coming up for the new year, for next year’s prelude of memories.
As flames shake out fresh with a sound of handkerchiefs
And trees bud birds to race the arriving sky.
Weep over the leavings of last year,
We’re done with pigeon-pie.
This year cry sea-gull, and keep a nipped finger till next March.
The sun starts now, practising for summer.
Surprised by the end of winter, detergent comes with free daffodils,
Opulent ladies begin playing at charities
As February waltzes out in the girls’ Excuse-me
And March comes in late, looking sheepish,
With hocus-crocus of mad March babies and royal hair
As Woolworth plies the primrose path to Mother’s day.
Out in the blue air of Sundays, people whistle and wash-leather their cars
With radios out on the pavement and soapy streams in the gutter
Until ...
Lo! More snow (everyone back inside:
Shilling for the gas, homework over hot crumpets and butter)
In March shivers, blowing like sand over the sea-slates
Or winter shook the last crumbs out of his cold cloth
For the visiting sun to peck at
Come on, spring!
Buck up, it’s nearly the silly season!
The trees are all bark, the wind all sarcastic bite
But the almond has pinkened ever since Valentine’s Day
And it won’t be long before sun, wind and trees
Make friends in a jolly rape of petals
On weekend anniversaries
Of so many,
So enjoyably
Lost virginities!
But meantime it’s spring wind, chilly wind,
Draught up the trouserlegs, scarves on rag-day
Wind
As the twigs chirrup with perhaps a little frost
Teasing the sap under the tickle of lambing-time,
And it’s a toss-up between
Cold fingers, or resisting the pleasure
Of smoking the kissing-season’s first fresh-air cigarette.
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THE BELOVED GARDENS)
Amid the noise
In millions, clangour of men
Sweating for self-praise;
In the misapprehension of iron, time-lapse, toil,
Germ in the pantry and
Universal hand;
By greenless villa, lock and staring cell
Earth’s plumage plucked,
Muscle
Treated and trussed,
Fit flesh for biting;
Amid new bulls without horn,
Plant without sap or seed,
Amid the un-flighted cranes
Go they,
The gardeners go
Forth secretly to the beloved gardens.
Among dog-daisies
And wild rose,
Treading over the long fought-for silence
Of grass imperishable
They give their good-days,
They go forgotten ways,
They bend, and disappear.
They open the long-locked ear
Of Time within;
And all the ages gone when the sun shone
Straight from eye to eye
Subtly take possession of their mind.
Bramble and woodbine,
Spurge, owled oak, and willow
Welcome homeward the slow dreamer, the old fellow.
His one friend sits by him and sings.
Mole, hole and hedgerow watch with a noonday eye
For the unwanted things.
Few come here to learn economy.
He, root-bent, researching the earth,
Tends to the only immortality.
It will receive him;
And shall give rebirth
To dog-daisies,
Bramble and woodbine,
Spurge, owled oak, willow
And wild rose,
To moth, fireweed, nettle and nightingale
Amid the noise.
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THE FIRST BULLFINCH
Rose-breasted, bobbing bird on the pathway,
Slate-blue back in the sun flashing steel,
Picking and hopping,
And stopping;
White rump-splash bobbing,
And robbing
Small, hidden, crevice-grown weeds
Of seeds -
Where have you been?
Why before have I never seen
Handfuls of sky-blown rose-flame,
Twig-bending plumply
In the sun-flecked mazes -
A steel-winged,
Pink-puffed
Thistle-tuft
Like you?
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DISASTER
Here are the people waiting
Against the flowing sea
Down the banks of shingle
The sun is circled with fog
We swim in the idle tide
The children fidget and argue
They balance along the ropes
The ropes that loosed the lifeboat
Washed away in the mist
To the lonely mooing at sea
The people read their papers
They sleep in the Sunday sun
A ship is lost in limbo
The fog is heavy with souls
Here are the people waiting
On the blond and shimmering shingle
A little too cold to swim
In the blue and tinsel sea
The women are thinking of lunch
And the boat has not come back
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CONCEPTION
I shall, calm-eyed,
Shake out my blankets in the sun
And sheets out like flags
Until bearing.
The many flowers
Race to grow faster than my melon-
Belly, round and ripe as a
Pink cantaloupe.
I shall
Lily and Amaranth
Plant among my hair and
Golden feet.
The thrush’s song
Shall await my shout before
Giving tongue to war
Over the world’s edge.
I shall give
A new priest to the sea:
Our kind is growing, who never
Blaspheme her beauty.
Our race,
Gentle as wave or wind,
Will help poor God to soothe
The hot world.
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MAYTIME
Maiden Kent in her first blush of blossom
Led in the Maytime to an orchard bridal
Uphill and downland black gorse put to the torch
Takes the coin of the sun and scatters it
In the path of wayfarers amid weddings
Who weave among reed-beds bittern and weed
To water-sheets
In the deep woodland waits
A reflected heaven
All the trees breathing a blue gas
Drift in a lake of altered consciousness
And all the bells are birds
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OCTOBER 16th 1987
The wind whines in the gratings. It is a mean cur
Leaping and baying at the last of the trees.
This night it pulls on a leash, still
By some harsh hand held between towering seas
And we pray again, as we prayed under a Scorpio Moon
(Piteously, in vain) the tyrant fist
Of air not follow its hound to scythe and flail
In seven howling hours seven counties' forest.
Felled trees flake into humus; rooftops wrenched
Break into powder and shard, a thin seam
Laid down, pointing the future's history.
Will fear come up on the spade? Will their seers dream?
Blood was not the storm's quarry but only our sleep,
Only our sleep, Lord; an amazing Hand
Held our houses safe from cedar and oak.
Only a few died, leaving a shattered land