Inside the Wave

by Helen Dunmore

  For fifteen summers, before he grew too old

  For French cricket, shrimping and rock pools.

  Here is the place where he built his dam

  Year after year. See, the stream still comes down

  Just as it did, and spreads itself on the sand

  Into a dozen channels. How he enlisted them:

  Those splendid spades, those sun-bonneted girls

  Furiously shoring up the ramparts.

  Here they are on the beach, just as they were

  Those fifteen summers. She has a rough towel

  Ready for him. The boy was always last out of the water.

  She would rub him down hard, chafe him like a foal

  Up on its legs for an hour and trembling, all angles.

  She would dry carefully between his toes.

  Here they are on the beach, the two of them

  Sitting on the same square of mackintosh,

  The same tartan rug. Quality lasts.

  There are children in the water, and mothers patrolling

  The sea’s edge, calling them back

  From the danger zone beyond the breakers.

  How her heart would stab when he went too far out.

  Once she flustered into the water, shouting

  Until he swam back. He was ashamed of her then.

  Wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t look at her even.

  Her skirt was sopped. She had to wring out the hem.

  She wonders if Father remembers.

  Later, when they’ve had their sandwiches

  She might speak of it. There are hours yet.

  Thousands, by her reckoning.

  At the Spit

  If you lie down at the Spit on this warm

  But sunless afternoon, here on the pebbles,

  Smelling the wrack and sea-blown plastic,

  If you squint at the clouds that sag on the horizon

  Without bringing rain or allowing the sun,

  If you lie down here in the hollow

  And take your backpack for a pillow

  And watch how the pebbles lose colour

  And then, shutting your eyes, listen,

  You’ll hear the tide swell and the wrack dry

  To fool’s balloons, incurably saline

  Crackling under the weight of your backpack

  As you lie down,

  If you lie down and as they say do nothing

  You’ll hear the tongue of the tide licking

  The Spit – O fine appetite! – You’ll hear the click

  And tumble of pebbles, slumbrous

  Geography shifting: this is the land mass

  And this the plastic, the wrack, the mess

  To pick over in search of a home. Go back,

  It’s late and the unseen sun’s dropping

  Hurts the clouds and turns them to rain.

  Drowsy, at home, you lie and dream

  Of longboats and long-shed blood

  Of corner shops and running for sweets –

  O sweet familiarity, geography

  Melting into the known –

  Terra Incognita

  And now we come to the unknown land

  With its blue coves and inlets where sweet water

  Bubbles against the salt. Its sand

  Is ready for footprints. Give me your hand

  Onto the rock where the seaweed clings

  And the red anemone throbs in its crevice

  Through swash and backwash. These things

  Various as the brain’s comb and the tide’s swing

  Or the first touch of untouched terrain

  On our footsoles, as the land explores us,

  Have become our fortune. Let me explain

  Which foods are good to eat, and which poison.

  Four cormorants, one swan

  The swans go up with slow wing-beats

  That strike off from the surface of the water.

  Even the most absorbed games-player

  Deep in his mobile, looks up at the clatter

  Of six swans’ wings.

  After the swans have patrolled their harbour

  They settle singly. One drifts with the current

  To the house-boat window that always opens,

  Another sails towards two cormorants

  Hanging out their wings

  And two coosing, or fishing

  In the shallows beside the jetty.

  Now the whole afternoon hangs

  In the balance between four cormorants

  And a single swan, approaching.

  The first cormorant pratfalls from its perch

  In an ungainly bundle of wings

  Or so it seems. But no, it is flying

  Arrowlike to a fish a hundred yards off.

  A lover could not be more direct.

  Girl in the Blue Pool

  Years back and full of echoes.

  Chlorine, urine, raucous

  Cuff of voices on broken surface.

  A boy on the edge rowdily teeters

  And you, knees flexed, arms back

  Are on the pulse of your stroke. Suppose

  It is you, now, in the pink bikini, close

  To making five hundred metres

  As the ceiling splinters with echoes.

  Suppose you touch the tiles on the turn

  And vanish. The churn

  Of bubbles streams at your heels

  While you shake water out of your ears

  To catch the voice of your instructor

  Who paces you, outpaces you

  On the blue-wet tiles. How her voice echoes.

  You should not be wearing a bikini

  And you were slow on the turn.

  I am years back and full of echoes.

  The silver stream where you swim

  Has long ago been swallowed,

  But at your temples the lovely hollows

  Play in June light. Suppose

  There is one length left in you, knees flexed

  Arms back. Chlorine, urine, raucous

  Voices on shattered surface. If that boy topples

  You too will go down.

  February 12th 1994

  No one else remembers that room

  With the blood pressure cuff and the plastic cot

  And the bag on its stand dripping

  Millilitre by millilitre

  When the visitors had gone home

  And the tyres six storeys down

  Skidded, infrequent.

  Snow on the window ticked

  The glass, becoming sleet

  And the sheets for all their stains were white.

  No one else remembers that room

  Where you cried each time the lights

  Went off and the nurses were absent

  For hours by morphia time,

  I reached for you in pain

  And lifted you in your hospital nightgown

  To wedge you against me

  For we were both falling

  You with purple, dangling limbs

  Ecstatic, all lips

  And quick, hot breathing,

  I watching a nurse who did not exist

  Write her hieroglyphics

  As the snow thickened.

  I made a vow to you then

  In our solitude

  That you would never remember,

  With two fingers I smoothed the ruck

  Of the gown against your back.

  What shall I do for my sister in the day she shall be spoken for?

  I have a little sister, she has no breasts.

  I buy her face covering at the shop

  Where they have nearly run out.

  So, we are lucky. Black cloth sucks

  Into her nostrils. My sister screams.

  When she’s finished saying she can’t breathe

  When I’ve cleaned the snot from her face

  And rearranged her so she’ll be safe

  I say: It’s for your own good.

  Do as I do and walk
close.

  I have a little sister, she has no breasts.

  She would like to be an ophthalmologist.

  When she was three she had a cyst

  Removed from under her left eyelid.

  I say: Don’t cry, you can still see out.

  I tell her to walk between me and the wall

  And keep her eyes downward. We scuttle

  Like crabs in a black wrapping.

  We shall buy rice, we shall go home.

  What shall I do for my sister

  In the day when she shall be spoken for?

  In Secret

  And this is where they met in secret.

  Follow my pointing finger. Now you see it

  Quite empty. Those curtains that veiled it

  Are rags, and the bed stripped bare.

  Here she played for him, there

  He placed his shoes in the corner.

  Piano from an upstairs room,

  Wanton extravagance of scales falling

  As we imagine birdsong –

  But only slow it down

  And hear the gong-repeat of a rhythm

  Like the treading of rubble over a woman.

  All the breaths of your life

  There is a gargoyle look when the mouth caves.

  No more words can be hoped for, the lips

  Are not for speaking, the tongue

  Is all sag and distortion.

  I might think that your kindness is effaced.

  No more look can be hoped for, your eyes

  Are not for seeing, the skin

  Is a drawn curtain over them.

  I hear your breath, now failing

  As all the breaths of your life become

  Petals endlessly opening

  Inward, where the dark is.

  Her children look for her

  Life and death are in the hands of God she said

  As a boat is in the hands of the dark water,

  And now her children look for her

  In the zizz of her sewing-machine each evening

  And the smell of cardamom.

  She said: life and death are in the hands of God.

  As the sun beat on the roof of the van

  She closed her eyes to dream,

  And her children look as the Pole Star goes up

  Close to the moon.

  Little papoose

  If I were the moon

  With a star papoose

  In the windy sky

  I’d carry my one star home,

  If I were the sea

  With boats in my arms

  On this cold morning

  I’d carry them,

  If I were sleeping

  And my dream turned

  I would carry you

  Little papoose

  Wherever you choose.

  Cliffs of Fall

  (to the memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins)

  Spring of turf and thrift, tangle of fleece, sheep-shit,

  Subtle flowers where honeybees knock

  At the foxglove lip and the gorse trap

  Then sheer on our left the drop. Spatter of bracken hooks

  Misleading the lambs. In the bank, marsh violets

  Wet, lovely, minute. We need not look for the fall, the chink

  Of pebble that tumbles. All the grey scree stirs

  Slip-rattles and stills itself. Here is the slope’s

  Angle, implacable. Here’s where you look

  Touch, unbalance, dislodge. Infinite drop

  Where the bee burrs at the foxglove’s lip,

  All quick-tongued, intimate.

  Time to step back to the wide margin

  Cleave to the path’s dapper attention

  Unspring each poem,

  Pitch each new note to the key of loss,

  Lose nothing. Stay clear of the drop

  Where the world bursts through its dirty glass.

  Sun on your neck, a dazzle of violets

  Infinitely slipsliding –

  No quick wing-beat of flight, but a slope

  Of gravel-rubble, its angle implacable

  stripping you raw. From here your fall

  Is a matter of form: a slow marvel.

  Five Versions from Catullus

  1 Through Babel of Nations

  Through babel of nations and waste of water

  I come my brother. What are these rites to us?

  Your ashes are speechless

  My words falter.

  Blind fate has taken you, brother,

  You and I are undone.

  The wine I bring you is spoiled

  With the salt of parting –

  What else can I give?

  Only a last greeting.

  2 Undone

  What you have done to me has undone me.

  You have led me so far from myself

  That my mind loses its bearings.

  Even if you shape-shifted

  To your best and dearest

  I couldn’t care for it. Dark love drives me on.

  3 Sirmio

  Almost island and jewel of all islands

  In lakes stiller than thought or in wild oceans

  Sweet or salt as the sea-god makes them,

  Sirmio,

  I see you, all of you, I take you in

  I see you, barely believing

  I’ve left those featureless, endless Bithynian plains.

  We travel over many waters

  To reach home-coming,

  Struggle and suffering over, the mind dissolved

  Of all its troubles, burdens laid down –

  The soft bed waits for our exhaustion.

  I see you, all of you, I know your

  Confusion of ripples against the lakeshore

  Welcoming laughter

  The sounds of home

  Ringing like masts in harbour:

  Sirmio.

  4 Dedication

  My slim volume, polished almost to nothing –

  Shall I dedicate it to you, Cornelius?

  You thought something of my songs

  Even though you were the only man in Italy

  Who could wrap up the world in three tomes

  Of flawless erudition.

  My God, your learning and labour

  Lean heavily against my little volume,

  So take my book, this fingernail’s width

  For what it’s worth.

  5 Sparrow

  Sparrow, my girl’s delight

  And plaything held to her breast,

  Sparrow whom she teases with one finger

  Daring your littleness to peck harder –

  Sparrow, I burn for her

  And crave the smallest crumb

  As the pair of you play

  Folded together in rapture

  Under one wing.

  I too long to comfort her

  In grief or oppressive longing –

  If only I could play with her as you do

  Until she forgets her soul’s sadness.

  Rim

  Here is the bowl. Do I want it still

  Chipped as it is and crazed,

  Its lustrous cream no longer running

  Over the body in fleet glaze,

  I’m getting rid, getting shot, cleansing

  Dark cupboards and fossil-deep

  Drawers lined with historic newspaper.

  I stop to read about the three-day-week.

  Here are gewgaws with tarnished clasps

  Here is the gravy-boat, the one item

  Surviving from the wedding service.

  Here’s Ted Heath’s improbable grin.

  I flick the rim and it gives back a tang –

  Yes, I remember that, the exact sound

  Of early curiosity and boredom.

  Bowl on my palm, I twist it round

  And round again, unsure.

  Do I hold or let it fall?

  On looking through the handle of a cup

  On looking through the handle of
a cup

  I spied a nest of green: the spout

  Minus the can, a bunch of leaves

  Big as my hand: two trees

  In the palm of the wind,

  On looking through the hole made by a pin

  In a plane leaf twirled

  All ways to catch the world

  I saw a drop of rain, swollen

  On the petal of a rose,

  On looking through the fault in my eyes

  With their arrhythmias of vision

  I saw what no one has seen:

  My cup-handle of a world,

  My pinhole morning.

  Ten Books

  Jacketless, buckled, pressed from the voyage,

  Ten books that once were crated to America

  And back again,

  That have known the salt sea’s swing under them,

  Oil stink, the deep throb of the engines

  And quick hands putting them back on the shelves.

  Spines torn, the paper wartime, the Faber

  Font squarish and the dates in Roman:

  The Waste Land and other poems,

  Poems Newly Selected, Siegfried Sassoon –

  How that name conjured with me

  As a soldier kicked at a dead man.