The Map and the Clock

by Carol Ann Duffy

Let in the thronging ancestors

  The unfulfilled desire,

  Let in the wraith of the dead earl,

  Let in the unborn tonight.

  Let in the cold,

  Let in the wet,

  Let in the loneliness,

  Let in the quick,

  Let in the dead,

  Let in the unpeopled skies.

  Oh how can virgin fingers weave

  A covering for the void,

  How can my fearful heart conceive

  Gigantic solitude?

  How can a house so small contain

  A company so great?

  Let in the dark,

  Let in the dead,

  Let in your love tonight.

  Let in the snow that numbs the grave,

  Let in the acorn-tree,

  The mountain stream and mountain stone,

  Let in the bitter sea.

  Fearful is my virgin heart

  And frail my virgin form,

  And must I then take pity on

  The raging of the storm

  That rose up from the great abyss

  Before the earth was made,

  That pours the stars in cataracts

  And shakes this violent world?

  Let in the fire,

  Let in the power,

  Let in the invading might.

  Gentle must my fingers be

  And pitiful my heart

  Since I must bind in human form

  A living power so great,

  A living impulse great and wild

  That cries about my house

  With all the violence of desire

  Desiring this my peace.

  Pitiful my heart must hold

  The lonely stars at rest,

  Have pity on the raven’s cry

  The torrent and the eagle’s wing,

  The icy water of the tarn

  And on the biting blast.

  Let in the wound,

  Let in the pain,

  Let in your child tonight.

  KATHLEEN RAINE

  To my sister Sian

  Do you remember Sian? How dearly do you remember? (Autobiography)

  Nature and Time are against us now:

  no more we leap up the river like salmon,

  nor dive through its fishy holes

  sliding along its summer corridor

  with all the water from Wales, nor tear it to silver

  shreds with our childish arms when it bolted our path for the day,

  nor wade wearing our bindings

  of string weed, white-flowering from our nakedness;

  nor lie in the hot yellow fields with the cows.

  We go home separately Sian.

  Strangest of all changes, that you have one door,

  I another! Dreamily I write to our childhood,

  sisters with a brotherly friendship, one loyal to both.

  There hang the black woods still with candles of daffodils

  lighting the draught of the wind, and our parted language

  speaks to each of us of the keepers’ cot in the bracken corner

  and the stream bed where the water had faded to rock.

  Easily we keep our secrets now, for no-one cares

  if we dare the red floods together, two little fools in the darkness

  whose souls flew high above danger, whose bodies

  death had a hundred times in its reach.

  Forever we

  did not end, but passed over our paths,

  I following you, dabbling our hands in the birds’ nests,

  darting through ghost walk and haunted graveyard

  when the year was dead in the church tower.

  We had one home together. That put us beyond all danger:

  that set us forever, that and our unfathomable friendship with trees,

  fields and horizons. Two children

  soilitary, pilgrimy, silent, inscrutably wishing

  forever dallying with lostness, whether our choice

  was through the jay woods, or over the mushroom mountains,

  or the old cider orchards.

  Our secrets

  were eternal and will always be. Forever dallying

  with lostness, at last we were lost and all paths

  were the path of our unforgettable double childhood.

  All our secrets were one – secrecy.

  The memory of what we kept secret is gone, but the secret is true.

  All the places were us, we were all the places,

  and the inscrutable innocent altars of nature.

  I see two children slipping into a wood

  speechlessly happy. Two lives lived have not changed it.

  For our ways, our fields, our river, our lostness

  were children. So we were our country.

  MARGIAD EVANS

  Brither Worm

  I saw a lang worm snoove throu the space atween twa stanes,

  pokan its heid, if it had ane, up throu a hole in the New Toun,

  up throu a crack ye wad hardly hae seen in an area of stane,

  unkenn’d upliftit tons of mason-wark piled on the soil

  wi causey-streets, biggit of granite setts, like blank waas flat on the grund,

  plainstane pavements of Thurso slabs laid owre the staneaircht cellars.

  the area fifteen feet doun, wi weill-fittan flagstanes, Regency wark.

  Nou, in my deedit stane-and-lime property awntert a nesh and perfect worm,

  and I was abasit wi thochts of what was gaun-on ablow my feet,

  that the feu’d and rentit grand was the soil of the Drumsheuch Forest,

  and that life gaed on inunder the grund-waa-stane and had sent out a spy,

  jalousan some Frien of the Worms had brocht a maist welcome shoure,

  whan I on my side of the crust had teemit a pail of water,

  meaning to gie the place a guid scrub-doun wi a stable-besom.

  Sae a lang, saft, sappy and delicate pink and naukit cratur

  neatly wan out frae atween thae weil-fittan chiselled, unnaitural stanes.

  I watched and thocht lang of the wonders of Nature, and didna muve,

  and thocht of the deeps of the soil, deeper nor the sea, and I made nae sound.

  A rat raxt frae a crack atween twa stanes.

  My hale body sheuk wi the grue.

  It keekit at me, and was gane.

  ROBERT GARIOCH

  I’m Neutral

  Last night in Scotland Street I met a man

  that gruppit my lapel – a kinna foreign

  cratur he seemed; he tellt me, There’s a war on

  atween the Lang-nebs and the Big-heid Clan.

  I wasna fasht, I took him for a moron,

  naething byordnar, but he said, Ye’re wan

  of thae lang-nebbit folk, and if I can,

  I’m gaunnae pash ye doun and rype your sporran.

  Says he, I’ll get a medal for this job:

  we’re watchan ye, we ken fine what ye’re at,

  ye’re with us or agin us, shut your gob.

  He gied a clout that knockit aff my hat,

  bawlan, A fecht! Come on, the Big-heid Mob!

  Aweill, I caa’d him owre, and that was that.

  ROBERT GARIOCH

  Ghaisties

  Cauld are the ghaisties in yon kir kyaird,

  and cauld the airms

  that they mell wi the mists of the timm breists of their loves;

  at the heid of their bed cauld angels staund on guaird,

  and marble doves.

  They ken-na the fear of Gode, as they sleep ayont sin,

  nor the terror of man,

  and there’s nane but the angels to glunch at their trueloves’ chairms,

  yet they lang for the reek of the creeshie swat frae the skin

  and the grup of a haun.

  But we in the warld are alowe

  wi the glawmer of bluid-reid flame

  that loups to the bluid in yer tongue�
��s tip as it tingles on mine,

  and the howe

  of the back we love wi our finger-nebbs, and the wame,

  brent-white, wi a flush aneath like cramosie wine,

  hou it curves to meet my ain!

  O, ma sonsie frow,

  whit tho the flesh be bruckle, and fiends be slee,

  the joys of the solid earth we’ll pree or they dwine,

  we’ll lauch at daith, and man, and the fiend, aa three, afore we dee.

  ROBERT GARIOCH

  Poem From Llanybri

  If you come my way that is…

  Between now and then, I will offer you

  A fist full of rock cress fresh from the bank

  The valley tips of garlic red with dew

  Cooler than shallots, a breath you can swank

  In the village when you come. At noon-day

  I will offer you a choice bowl of cawl

  Served with a ‘lover’s’ spoon and a chopped spray

  Of leeks or savori fach, not used now,

  In the old way you’ll understand. The din

  Of children singing through the eyelet sheds

  Ringing ’smith hoops, chasing the butt of hens;

  Or I can offer you Cwmcelyn spread

  With quartz stones from the wild scratchings of men:

  You will have to go carefully with clogs

  Or thick shoes for it’s treacherous the fen,

  The East and West Marshes also have bogs.

  Then I’ll do the lights, fill the lamp with oil,

  Get coal from the shed, water from the well;

  Pluck and draw pigeon with crop of green foil

  This your good supper from the lime-tree fell.

  A sit by the hearth with blue flames rising,

  No talk. Just a stare at ‘Time’ gathering

  Healed thoughts, pool insight, like swan sailing

  Peace and sound around the home, offering

  You a night’s rest and my day’s energy.

  You must come – start this pilgrimage

  Can you come? – send an ode or elegy

  In the old way and raise our heritage.

  LYNETTE ROBERTS

  Poem

  We must uprise O my people. Though

  Secretly trenched in sorrel, we must

  Upshine outshine the day’s sun: and day

  Intensified by the falling prism

  Of rain shall curve our smile with straw.

  Bring plimsole plover to the tensile sand

  And with cuprite crest and petulant feet

  Distil our notes into febrile reeds

  Crisply starched at the water-rail of tides.

  On gault and greensand a gramophone stands:

  In zebrine stripes strike out the pilotless

  Age: from saxophone towns brass out the dead:

  Disinter futility, that we entombing men

  Might bridle our runaway hearts.

  On tamarisk, on seafield pools shivering

  With water-cats, ring out the square slate notes.

  Shape the birdbox trees with neumes. Wind sound

  Singular into cool and simple corners,

  Round pale bittern grass, and all unseen

  Unknown places of sheltered rubble

  Where whimbrels, redshanks, sandpipers ripple

  For the wing of living. Under tin of earth

  And wooden boles where owls break music:

  From this killing world against humanity,

  Uprise against, outshine the day’s sun.

  LYNETTE ROBERTS

  For a Child Expected

  Lovers whose lifted hands are candles in winter,

  Whose gentle ways like streams in the easy summer,

  Lying together

  For secret setting of a child, love what they do,

  Thinking they make that candle immortal, those streams forever flow,

  And yet do better than they know.

  So the first flutter of a baby felt in the womb,

  Its little signal and promise of riches to come,

  Is taken in its father’s name;

  Its life is the body of his love, like his caress,

  First delicate and strange, that daily use

  Makes dearer and priceless.

  Our baby was to be the living sign of our joy,

  Restore to each the other’s lost infancy;

  To a painter’s pillaging eye

  Poet’s coiled hearing, add the heart we might earn

  By the help of love; all that our passion would yield

  We put to planning our child.

  The world flowed in; whatever we liked we took:

  For its hair, the gold curls of the November oak

  We saw on our walk;

  Snowberries that make a Milky Way in the wood

  For its tender hands; calm screen of the frozen flood

  For our care of its childhood.

  But the birth of a child is an uncontrollable glory;

  Cat’s cradle of hopes will hold no living baby,

  Long though it lay quietly.

  And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born

  It compels humility: what we began

  Is now its own.

  For as the sun that shines through glass

  So Jesus in His Mother was.

  Therefore every human creature,

  Since it shares in His nature,

  In candle-gold passion or white

  Sharp star should show its own way of light.

  May no parental dread or dream

  Darken our darling’s early beam:

  May she grow to her right powers

  Unperturbed by passion of ours.

  ANNE RIDLER

  Black Friday

  Oot behind a lorry,

  Peyin nae heed,

  Ablow a doubledecker,

  A poor wean deid.

  Perra worn sannies,

  Wee durrty knees,

  Heh, erra polis,

  Stand back please!

  Lookit the conductriss.

  Face as white as chalk,

  Heh, see the driver but

  Cannae even talk.

  Anyone a witness?

  Na, we niver saw.

  Glad ah’m no the polis

  Goin tae tell its maw.

  Weemen windae-hingin

  Herts in their mooth,

  It’s no oor close, Lizzie

  Oh Gawdstrewth!

  Screams on the landin,

  Twa closes doon,

  It’s no wee Hughie!

  Poor Nellie Broon.

  Phone up the shipyard.

  Oh, what a shame!

  Yes, we’ll inform him,

  Please repeat the name.

  See Big Hughie,

  Jokin wi the squad,

  Better knock off, Heug,

  Oh dear God.

  Whit – no his laddie?

  Aw, bloody hell!

  D’ye see Hughie’s face but,

  He’s just a boy himsel.

  JAMES COPELAND

  Dead ponies

  There is death enough in Europe without these

  Dead ponies on the mountain.

  They are the underlining, the emphasis of death.

  It is not wonderful that when they live

  Their eyes are shadowed under mats of hair.

  Despair and famine do not gripe so hard

  When the bound earth and sky are kept remote

  Behind clogged hairs.

  The snows engulfed them, pressed their withered haunches flat,

  Filled up their nostrils, burdened the cage of their ribs,

  The snow retreated. Their bodies stink to heaven,

  Potently crying out to raven and hawk and dog;

  Come! Pick us clean; cleanse our fine bones of blood.

  They were never lovely save as foals,

  Before their necks grew long, uncrested;

  Hut the wildness of the mountain was in their st
epping,

  The pride of Spring burnt in their haunches,

  They were tawny as the rushes of the marsh.

  The prey-birds have had their fill, and preen their feathers:

  Soft entrails have gone to make the hawk arrogant.

  BRENDA CHAMBERLAIN

  The Bee Meeting

  Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers –

  The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.

  In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,

  And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?

  They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

  I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?

  Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,

  Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.

  Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.

  They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

  Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?

  Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?

  Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,

  Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.

  Their smiles and their voices are changing. I am led through a beanfield.

  Strips of tinfoil winking like people,

  Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,

  Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts,

  Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?