We are the grown-ups, they the children
sent to bed while the sun is shining,
with a quilt to keep them warm.
We are the clothed, and they the naked.
Their dress of flesh has slipped off.
If they had a shroud, it has rotted.
We are old beside the purity of their hope,
those drowned mariners
anchored in salvation,
we bring nothing but a stare
of fickle, transient wonder,
but they make their own flowers –
a flush of primroses,
dog violets, foxgloves
taller than children, rusty montbretia –
and at Christmas they give birth
to the first daffodils
startled from the earth.
Getting into the car
No, they won’t gather their white skirts
before stooping to enter
the deep-buttoned wedding car,
having placed their flowers
in the bridesmaid’s fingers,
hand-tied, unravelling.
They won’t wipe the delicate sweat
of condensation, and wave
one last time,
no, not for them the fat-tyred Mercedes
or mothers swooping to bless
with tweaks and kisses.
How the wedding car smells of skin
and heat, and dry-cleaning of suits –
but no, it will not happen.
Girls, it is your fortune
to be outside a club at 3 A.M.
to be spangled and beautiful
but to pick the wrong men,
to get into the car with them
and go where they are going
over the black river, under the black river
where your eyes will be wiped of sight
and your bodies of breathing.
Glad of these times
Driving along the motorway
swerving the packed lanes
I am glad of these times.
Because I did not die in childbirth
because my children will survive me
I am glad of these times.
I am not hungry, I do not curtsey,
I lock my door with my own key
and I am glad of these times,
glad of central heating and cable TV
glad of e-mail and keyhole surgery
glad of power showers and washing machines,
glad of polio inoculations
glad of three weeks’ paid holiday
glad of smart cards and cashback,
glad of twenty types of yoghurt
glad of cheap flights to Prague
glad that I work.
I do not breathe pure air or walk green lanes,
see darkness, hear silence,
make music, tell stories,
tend the dead in their dying
tend the newborn in their birthing,
tend the fire in its breathing,
but I am glad of my times,
these times, the age
we feel in our bones, our rage
of tyre music, speed
annulling the peasant graves
of all my ancestors,
glad of my hands on the wheel
and the cloud of grit as it rises
where JCBs move motherly
widening the packed motorway.
Off-script
No, not a demonstration,
but each of us refusing
to learn our part.
The chorus dissolves
in ragged voices.
There is nothing for the director to work with.
We are quietly talking
off-script to one another –
‘Yes, rhubarb with ginger –’
‘Indeed we are all made from the dust of stars’
They are building houses
on rainwet fields
where the smoke of horses
has barely cleared –
indeed we are all made from the dust of stars,
even these houses are made from the dust of stars
whose light gallops towards us –
in the remotest corner
of the black-wet universe
there is a galaxy
of bright horses –
Tulip
How cool the lovely bulb of your roundness.
Bare-faced and sleek, you rise from your leaves.
You have the skin of a raindrop.
Blink, and your green flushes scarlet.
Poised on the catwalk of spring, you’ll move
in your own time, smile when you want to.
Nothing comes up to you. Forget-me-nots
crowd at your roots, my fingers
hover, narcissi rustle
but you are still. Only the sun touches you.
Finger by finger it opens your petals
loosens the lovely bulb of your roundness,
makes you swagger in your exposure,
knows, as you don’t, that it can’t last long.
Beautiful today the
banana plants, camellia, echium, wild garlic flower’s
rank tang of a more northern spring,
beautiful today the surf on Porthkidney Beach
and the standing out of the lighthouse, sheer
because of the rain past, the rain to come, the rain
that has brought this cliff-side to jungle thickness.
The hammock’s green with a winter of rain, beautiful today
the bamboo, wrist-thick. Was it on this
foothold, this shelf, this terrace, it learned
to surf on a hiss of breeze, was it today
that taught this dry handshake of leaves
against the pull of tide on Porthkidney Beach?
A step, a seat, a stare to the east
where light springs from a wasteland
beyond where the wet sun dawns –
beautiful today, sun shakes from its shoulders
the night tides. In a wasteland of easterly light
sun makes play on the waves
but the hollow surf turns over and over
and nobody comes, only a track of footprints
runs to the sea, and the tall pines
make shapes of their limbs – beautiful today
the dazzle they capture as landscape,
the resin they ooze from their wounds.
White planks are full of washed-away footsteps, beautiful
today the graining of sweat and flesh. This shell
wears at its heart a coil
to last when the curves are gone – but today
the flush of light, the flowering of freckles
on tender skin are helplessly present
in the hour between pallor and sunburn,
while the banana plant wears its heart in a fist
of tiny fruit that will never ripen or open.
In the distance, the little town
waits for its saint to sail in on a leaf
for the second time, and bless its legion of roofs.
Dead gull on Porthmeor
You could use his wing as a fan
to rid yourself of dreams,
you could light a candle at midnight
in the flooded beach hut
and hear the wooden flute
waver its music
like a drop of rain
into a storm,
and the sea would prowl
along the black-wet horizon
and the sand would shine
as white as corn
ready for winnowing.
Yes, you could use his wing as a fan.
Narcissi
Everything changes to black and white –
the shaggy wreck of the Alba,
the shine of the neap tide
where the drowned funnels gulp for air
and the waves break
like narcissi,
or the dog that skids to a stop, then quivers
all over, shaking a floss of water
to hide the Island.
The sea begins to smell of flowers
as the tide turns from its lair,
the narcissi flake off one by one
from that rust-bucket slumped in the sand –
the Alba’s an old hand at drowning.
I was two when they first plumped me down
between Man’s Head and the Island
where fox-trails of water ran out
over Porthmeor strand.
I smell something which reminds me
of not being born,
my mother walks on the shoreline
a figure or maybe a figurehead
with a smile of wood.
In the big glare of the white day
I clutch at the sand’s
talkative hiss of grains,
lose my balance, and suddenly
scud on all fours
into the narcissi.
Dolphins whistling
Yes, we believed that the oceans were endless
surging with whales, serpents and mermaids,
demon-haunted and full of sweet voices
to lure us over the edge of the world,
we were conquerors, pirates, explorers, vagabonds
war-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed
the wave’s furrow, made maps
that led others to the sea’s harvest
and sometimes we believed we heard dolphins whistling,
through the wine-dark waters we heard dolphins whistling.
We were restless and the oceans were endless,
rich in cod and silver-scaled herring
so thick with pilchard we dipped in our buckets
and threw the waste on the fields to rot,
we were mariners, fishers of Iceland, Newfoundlanders
fortune-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed
the wave’s furrow and earned our harvest
hungrily trawling the broad waters,
and sometimes we believed we heard dolphins whistling,
through blue-green depths we heard dolphins whistling.
The catch was good and the oceans were endless
so we fed them with run-off and chemical rivers
pair-fished them, scoured the sea-bed for pearls
and searched the deep where the sperm-whale plays,
we were ambergris merchants, fish farmers, cod-bank strippers
coral-crushers, reef-poisoners, we ploughed
the sea’s furrow and seized our harvest
although we had to go far to find it
for the fish grew small and the whales were strangers,
coral was grey and cod-banks empty,
algae bloomed and the pilchards vanished
while the huer’s lookout was sold for a chalet,
and the dolphins called their names to one another
through the dark spaces of the water
as mothers call their children at nightfall
and grow fearful for an answer.
We were conquerors, pirates, explorers, vagabonds
war-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed
the wave’s furrow, drew maps
to leads others to the sea’s harvest,
and we believed that the oceans were endless
and we believed we could hear the dolphins whistling.
Borrowed light
Such a connoisseur of borrowed light!
Pale as a figurehead, undismayed
by the rough footpath
you climbed towards the view.
At the top, silent, you would breathe in
the spread of land you didn’t care to own,
your face for a moment stern
and rapt, careless of children.
Such a connoisseur of borrowed light!
Even when your voice grew harsh
as those small stones rattling
down the adder path,
or when a January wind
harried cloud shadows
over the built-up valleys
you would climb as far as that boulder
where the view began,
and watch its unravelling.
You met equally
the landscape knitting itself
from russet, indigo
and crawling tractors,
or the blinding stare of the sea.
A winter imagination
Surely it’s not too much to ask
from a winter imagination:
the clattering of chairs onto a pavement
the promptness of waiters before days waste them
and of course, the flickering of leaves,
the insouciant, constant
rapture of following the breeze.
Last night my daughter dreamed
that we would die, mother and father
gone while she stood watching.
I soothed her in my arms, promised her husband,
babies, troops of friends:
like the defences of a vulnerable kingdom
I named them, one by one. She slept rosily
but for me the bone-cold passages
still rang to her cry
You’ll die and I’ll be alone.
Surely it’s not too much to ask
for a warm day to take away such dreams
for violet, midge-haunted shadows
under the sycamore that grows like a weed,
for this year’s beautiful girls
to flaunt their bellies, while the boys
who won’t stop talking, trot to keep up.
One of them is after my daughter
but her lovely eyes are blue with distance.
She is off at the gallop, dreamless.
Athletes
And what a load of leaf
there was on the trees by June.
From sticky fists
rammed in the eye of the bud
they’d opened wide,
and when the wind blew
the horse chestnuts were athletes
running with torches of green
in the half-marathon of summer.
Pneumonia
on our raft
after the long night of storm
the water bubbles
the sea is calm
the planks squeak lazily
where the ropes chafe them
the sea bulges
ready to open
why it should smell like jonquils
no one knows
the idling of the sun
changes everything
on our raft
after the long night of storm
the water bubbles
eye-level
why not watch it for ever
Wall is the book
(for Anne Stevenson)
Wall is the book of these old lands
each page scripted by stones,
each lichen frond, orange or golden,
wall’s stubborn illumination.
Read wall slowly, for it takes time
to grasp the sentence of stone.
Wall breaks in a tumbled caesura
of boulders. Read on
where pucker of breeze on a tarn’s shield
breaks the mirror of wall
and bog cotton trembles. It rains
on a draggle of sheep in the field
where wall breaks the force
and bite of steel from the north
whence weather and danger come.
Wall is the holy book of these old lands
each age scripted by stone.
Gorse
All through sour soil the gorse thrusts.
It is rough furze first, chopped to free the fields.
Burned off in sheets of carbon, it lives
down at the roots, grappling peat sponge,
black as an eclipse of the sun.
Bu
t when the gorse is out of blossom
kissing is then out of fashion.
Like ill-fitting shoes, gorse flowers
pinch and pinch until the sun touches them.
Now in the lanes a spice of coconut,
now the gorse thriving to wipe
the eye of winter with a cloth of gold,
now the bees in their bee kitchen
pilot themselves above the spines,
burrow past rapiers
bumbling, lunge into flowers
like drunks strangely kept safe
in a world full of harms,
and now it comes –
a prickle of intricate buds
a breath of perfume,
a flare along the roadways, a torch
barely mastered in the runner’s arms
leaping the verges to set April alight.
Glad of These Times Page 2
