Through the Square Window
In my dream the dead have arrived
to wash the windows of my house.
There are no blinds to shut them out with.
the clouds above the Lough are stacked
like the clouds are stacked above Delft.
They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder
if it's my son they're after, his
effortless breath, his ribbon of years-
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,
inured, it would seem, quite naturally
to the sluicing and battering and parting back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior...
One blue boy holds a rag in his teeth
between panes like a conjuror.
And then, as suddenly as they came, they go.
And there is a horizon
from which only the clouds stare in,
the massed canopies of Hazelbank,
the severed tip of the Strangford Peninsula,
and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork
in my mouth, stopper-bottled, in fact,
like a herbalist’s cure for dropsy.
A
Performance
I blame the leaves: they fell from the sky in such a wild, golden rain
They pulled me in, to see them thigh-deep over flowers and graves
That had been stamped with names and dates, faith and pain,
Like flags on sinking ships. No more years to go by, all whos
And wheres washed out in nature’s fire, the only death here
Is Autumn’s, and she does it too well. The trees’ bold undoing
Is no serious grief, but an accomplishment of practice.
I wonder what faces the graves will have
When Winter is here, and her show is over.
The
Mirror on the Ceiling
There was too much space in him.
I gave him everything on the outside –
The long curve of my spine; arms, feet, thighs.
He was the actor and director of his own imagination,
Dying for every exterior. The moving
Crown of my head was the rising star in his heaven.
Without the sight of it. No show, no reflection –
Not even in his eyes, which were so outside of himself,
So beside himself, so down on every last cell of himself –
I craved for nothing but blind discretion.
He stands on my doorstep, pleading his lost barbiturate,
But the mirror is in the outhouse. I promise cobwebs, whitewash.
The Rope
I have paused in the door jamb’s shadow to watch you
playing Shop or Cliff! or Café or Under-the-sea
among the flotsam of props on our tarmacked driveway.
All courtship. All courtesy.
At eight and six, you have discovered yourselves friends,
at last, and this the surprise the summer
has gifted me, as if some
penny-cum-handkerchief conjuror
had let loose a kingfisher . . .
you whirl and pirouette, as if in a ballet
take decorous turns, and pay for whatever you need
with a witch’s currency:
grass cuttings, sea glass, coal, an archaeopteryx
of glued kindling from the fire basket.
You don two invisible outsize overcoats – for love?
For luck? And jump with your eyes shut.
And I can almost see it thicken between you –
your sibling-tetheredness, an umbilicus,
fattened on mornings like this as on a mother’s blood,
loose, translucent, not yet in focus
but incipient as yeast and already strong enough
to knock both of you off your balance
when you least expect it, some afternoon after work
decades hence,
one call from a far-flung city and, look,
all variegated possibles – lovers, kids, apartments –
whiten into mist; the rope is flexing,
tugging you close, and you come, obedient
children that you are, back to this moment,
staggering to a halt and then straightening,
grown little again inside your oversize coats and shoes
and with sea glass still to arrange,
but without me watching.
I have paused in the door jamb’s shadow to watch you
playing Shop or Cliff! or Café or Under-the-sea
among the flotsam of props on our tarmacked driveway.
All courtship. All courtesy.
At eight and six, you have discovered yourselves friends,
at last, and this the surprise the summer
has gifted me, as if some
penny-cum-handkerchief conjuror
had let loose a kingfisher . . .
you whirl and pirouette, as if in a ballet
take decorous turns, and pay for whatever you need
with a witch’s currency:
grass cuttings, sea glass, coal, an archaeopteryx
of glued kindling from the fire basket.
You don two invisible outsize overcoats – for love?
For luck? And jump with your eyes shut.
And I can almost see it thicken between you –
your sibling-tetheredness, an umbilicus,
fattened on mornings like this as on a mother’s blood,
loose, translucent, not yet in focus
but incipient as yeast and already strong enough
to knock both of you off your balance
when you least expect it, some afternoon after work
decades hence,
one call from a far-flung city and, look,
all variegated possibles – lovers, kids, apartments –
whiten into mist; the rope is flexing,
tugging you close, and you come, obedient
children that you are, back to this moment,
staggering to a halt and then straightening,
grown little again inside your oversize coats and shoes
and with sea glass still to arrange,
but without me watching.
Genetics
My
father's in my fingers, but my mother's in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure -
I know my parents made me by my hands.
They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.
With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.
I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father's by my fingers, my mother's by my palms
demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.
So take me with you, take up the skin's demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I'll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure -
I know my parents made me by my hands.
They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.
With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.
I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father's by my fingers, my mother's by my palms
demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.
So take me with you, take up the skin's demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I'll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.
The
Millihelen
It never looks warm or properly daytime
in black-and-white photographs the sheer cliff-
face of the ship still enveloped in its scaffolding
backside against the launching cradle
ladies lining the quay in their layered drapery
touching their gloves to their lips and just as
They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships rises
from choirboys’ mouths in wisps and snatches
and evil skitters off and looks askance
for now a switch is flicked at a distance
and the moment swollen with catgut-
about-to-snap with ice picks hawks’ wings
pine needles eggshells bursts and it starts
grandstand of iron palace of rivets starts
moving starts slippery-sliding down
slow as a snail at first in its viscous passage
taking on slither and speed gathering in
the Atlas-capable weight of its own momentum
tonnage of grease beneath to get it waterborne
tallow soft soap train oil a rendered whale
this last the only millihelen her beauty
slathered all over the slipway
faster than a boy with a ticket in his pocket
might run alongside it the bright sheet
of the Lough advancing faster than a tram
heavy chains and anchors kicking in
lest it outdoes itself straining up
to a riot of squeals and sparks lest it capsizes
before its beginning lest it drenches
the aldermen and the ship sits back in the sea
as though it were ordinary and wobbles
ever so slightly and then it and the sun-splashed
tilted hills the railings the pin-striped awning
in fact everything regains its equilibrium.
Advice
You think it ugly: drawing lines with a knife
Down the backs of those writers we exist to dislike. But it’s life.
One is disadvantaged by illustrious company
Left somehow undivided. Divide it with animosity.
Don’t be proud –
Viciousness in poetry isn’t frowned on, it’s allowed.
Big fish in a big sea shrink proportionately.
Stake out your territory
With stone walls, steamrollers, venomous spit
From the throat of a luminous nightflower. Gerrymander it.
Glaciers
There is
no sea in my blood.
There is nothing that cannot be stopped.
God’s wand is absolute.
Looking at glaciers
Jinxed into stillness –
I miss oceans in my head.
There is nothing that cannot be stopped.
God’s wand is absolute.
Looking at glaciers
Jinxed into stillness –
I miss oceans in my head.
Love
Song
I see
light everywhere
Over the bus driver the woman
With her trolley in the street
I see dusk
I hear the clock at four
I hear the silence in cupboards
Birdsong
Backwater dawn
I taste drier than flour
I smell the roots of trees
Before I see their arms
Shrieking
On the skyline
I feel diamonds pushed into
The bloodstream
Self-generated, a gift,
Making for the head I feel my head
Thrust into
A bucketful of stars
And all my senses
Singing
Over the bus driver the woman
With her trolley in the street
I see dusk
I hear the clock at four
I hear the silence in cupboards
Birdsong
Backwater dawn
I taste drier than flour
I smell the roots of trees
Before I see their arms
Shrieking
On the skyline
I feel diamonds pushed into
The bloodstream
Self-generated, a gift,
Making for the head I feel my head
Thrust into
A bucketful of stars
And all my senses
Singing
This
Century, The Next, The Last
My
husband requests a sky burial
he wishes to be
as carrion sequestered by leopards
strung up in a desert tree
Back to the familiar corridor he
may choose any opening
but all the rooms contain me
dressed for a wedding
he wishes to be
as carrion sequestered by leopards
strung up in a desert tree
Back to the familiar corridor he
may choose any opening
but all the rooms contain me
dressed for a wedding
Awaiting
Burial
Being
born was as painful as this—
The crusade of the heart to bloom in mist,
The pull of blood
On everything the body had
To pump in a new direction,
The sliding dissection
Of water
And air—
Getting the heart to falter
And the lungs to breathe water
Requires
The tonweight of the sky,
A damaged hillside, night-time,
The tunnel you dreamt of, O
Sarah, speak to me, you’ve been through
The journey, was there light on the other side
The crusade of the heart to bloom in mist,
The pull of blood
On everything the body had
To pump in a new direction,
The sliding dissection
Of water
And air—
Getting the heart to falter
And the lungs to breathe water
Requires
The tonweight of the sky,
A damaged hillside, night-time,
The tunnel you dreamt of, O
Sarah, speak to me, you’ve been through
The journey, was there light on the other side
Lighthouse
My son's
awake at ten, stretched out along
his bunk beneath the ceiling, wired and watchful.
The end of August. Already the high-flung
daylight sky of our Northern solstice dulls
earlier and earlier to a clouded bowl;
his Star of David lamp and plastic moon
have turned the dusk to dark outside his room.
Across the Lough, where ferries venture blithely
and once a cruise ship, massive as a palace,
inched its brilliant decks to open sea –
a lighthouse starts its own nightlong address
in fractured signalling; it blinks and bats
the swingball of its beam, then stands to catch,
then hurls it out again beyond its parallax.
He counts each creamy loop inside his head,
each well-black interval, and thinks it just for him –
this gesture from a world that can't be entered:
the two of them partly curtained, partly seen,
upheld in a sort of boy-talk conversation
no one else can hear. That private place, it answers,
with birds and slatted windows –I've been there.
his bunk beneath the ceiling, wired and watchful.
The end of August. Already the high-flung
daylight sky of our Northern solstice dulls
earlier and earlier to a clouded bowl;
his Star of David lamp and plastic moon
have turned the dusk to dark outside his room.
Across the Lough, where ferries venture blithely
and once a cruise ship, massive as a palace,
inched its brilliant decks to open sea –
a lighthouse starts its own nightlong address
in fractured signalling; it blinks and bats
the swingball of its beam, then stands to catch,
then hurls it out again beyond its parallax.
He counts each creamy loop inside his head,
each well-black interval, and thinks it just for him –
this gesture from a world that can't be entered:
the two of them partly curtained, partly seen,
upheld in a sort of boy-talk conversation
no one else can hear. That private place, it answers,
with birds and slatted windows –I've been there.
My Life
According to You
So I was
born and was small for ages
and then suddenly a cardboard box
appeared with two furry black ears
sticking out of it it made me nervous
but I was brave and gave it a bell
to play with and then out it jumped
and loved me it was my cat I called it
Morris Morrissey it matched
my mother’s Morris Minor
For the
next bit
I was a
teenager and then I grew up
I had a flat in Dublin and a boyfriend
he was a vet little bed little kitchen
little towel rack lots of little cups
and saucers and then off he went
to Africa he sent me pictures
of giraffes and of the second
tallest waterfall in the world
when he got back he wasn’t my friend
anymore
I cried
for a
week I was also at university
a bigger place than school with bigger
chairs and desks and when it finished
I found a suitcase it was red
with purple flowers it had a scarf
around the handle I put in everything
I needed socks and a jotter and snacks
and took a plane across the ocean
to Japan to visit Godzilla
where it
was
summer
and boiling hot and the people
all kept wind chimes to make it
cooler and rode bicycles to the shops
and at the same time held up umbrellas
though it wasn’t even raining
and when I met a man in a bright
white classroom the darkest parts
of our eyes turned into swirls then question
marks then hearts so we got married
and went
hippety
hoppety
splat a mountain a lake
a desert we bought a house a tiny one
at first and then a massive one a baby
knocked at the door one night
but didn’t come in and then another
baby came he cried a lot
we thought he had tummy ache
we gave him a bath in a bucket
he was just lonely
for his sister
to come
and keep him company
but you were still floating about
in space inside your bubble egg
it had accessories a switch
for going sideways a switch
for going upside down or faster
it was a cross between a sparkly green
and a sparkly silver the moon
was very annoying and then whenever
we’d all
been bored
on our
own for long enough down
you came on a path of lightning
to finish off the family you were born
on the living room floor at three
in the morning in front of the trampoline-
sofa and I heard them say A Girl!
and sat up straightaway we were both
pretty and I opened out my arms
and that’s it really
When you
grow up
I’m
going to be so busy taking you
to the house shop waiting by the play-
ground gates to bring your children
swimming I won’t be any different
I’ll keep your room exactly as it is
for you to visit bric-a-brac collection
on the shelf the bed your father built
the letters of your name in neon
appearing on the ceiling
when it’s
time
and then suddenly a cardboard box
appeared with two furry black ears
sticking out of it it made me nervous
but I was brave and gave it a bell
to play with and then out it jumped
and loved me it was my cat I called it
Morris Morrissey it matched
my mother’s Morris Minor
I had a flat in Dublin and a boyfriend
he was a vet little bed little kitchen
little towel rack lots of little cups
and saucers and then off he went
to Africa he sent me pictures
of giraffes and of the second
tallest waterfall in the world
when he got back he wasn’t my friend
a bigger place than school with bigger
chairs and desks and when it finished
I found a suitcase it was red
with purple flowers it had a scarf
around the handle I put in everything
I needed socks and a jotter and snacks
and took a plane across the ocean
to Japan to visit Godzilla
all kept wind chimes to make it
cooler and rode bicycles to the shops
and at the same time held up umbrellas
though it wasn’t even raining
and when I met a man in a bright
white classroom the darkest parts
of our eyes turned into swirls then question
marks then hearts so we got married
a desert we bought a house a tiny one
at first and then a massive one a baby
knocked at the door one night
but didn’t come in and then another
baby came he cried a lot
we thought he had tummy ache
we gave him a bath in a bucket
he was just lonely
but you were still floating about
in space inside your bubble egg
it had accessories a switch
for going sideways a switch
for going upside down or faster
it was a cross between a sparkly green
and a sparkly silver the moon
was very annoying and then whenever
you came on a path of lightning
to finish off the family you were born
on the living room floor at three
in the morning in front of the trampoline-
sofa and I heard them say A Girl!
and sat up straightaway we were both
pretty and I opened out my arms
and that’s it really
to the house shop waiting by the play-
ground gates to bring your children
swimming I won’t be any different
I’ll keep your room exactly as it is
for you to visit bric-a-brac collection
on the shelf the bed your father built
the letters of your name in neon
appearing on the ceiling
Clocks
The
clocks do all the talking. He visits the grave in the middle of a three hour
loop
and knows the year of completion of every castle in Ireland, His route
is always the same: the round tower via the aqueduct via the cemetery via the ramparts
via the Battle of Antrim during the Rising of the United Irishmen in 1798,
the slaughter of which is more present if he’s deep in the morning
of his April wedding breakfast or locked into the moment they fitted the oxygen mask
and she rolled her bruised eyes back. She is unable to find the stop for the bus to Belfast
and stays indoors. The nets turn the daylight white and empty.
She has worn the married life of her sister so tightly
over her own, the noise of the clocks makes her feel almost without skin.
Sometimes she sits in her sister’s chair, and feels guilty.
She has Countdown for company and a selective memory –
the argument at the funeral with her niece over jewellry and, years ago,
the conspiracy to keep her single, its success. Time settles over each afternoon
like an enormous wing, when the flurry of lunchtime has left them
and the plates have already been set for tea. He reads extensively –
from Hitler and Stalin, Parallel Lives, to Why Ireland Starved –
but has taken to giving books away recently to anyone who calls.
Winter or summer, evenings end early: they retire to their separate rooms
at least two hours before sleep. It falls like an act of mercy
when the twenty-two clocks chime eight o’clock in almost perfect unison.
and knows the year of completion of every castle in Ireland, His route
is always the same: the round tower via the aqueduct via the cemetery via the ramparts
via the Battle of Antrim during the Rising of the United Irishmen in 1798,
the slaughter of which is more present if he’s deep in the morning
of his April wedding breakfast or locked into the moment they fitted the oxygen mask
and she rolled her bruised eyes back. She is unable to find the stop for the bus to Belfast
and stays indoors. The nets turn the daylight white and empty.
She has worn the married life of her sister so tightly
over her own, the noise of the clocks makes her feel almost without skin.
Sometimes she sits in her sister’s chair, and feels guilty.
She has Countdown for company and a selective memory –
the argument at the funeral with her niece over jewellry and, years ago,
the conspiracy to keep her single, its success. Time settles over each afternoon
like an enormous wing, when the flurry of lunchtime has left them
and the plates have already been set for tea. He reads extensively –
from Hitler and Stalin, Parallel Lives, to Why Ireland Starved –
but has taken to giving books away recently to anyone who calls.
Winter or summer, evenings end early: they retire to their separate rooms
at least two hours before sleep. It falls like an act of mercy
when the twenty-two clocks chime eight o’clock in almost perfect unison.
Vanity Fair
Dearest
William—
I could begin by hoping you are well in England
(and I do!) now that the — th regiment has returned
to Chatham; or I could begin by telling you
that reports of worsening weather here are true;
that Georgie thinks you wicked and unkind
for leaving him; that your former servants pine;
or that father, though no better, is no worse, etc.
But this is not a weather-talk sort of letter.
It is after three. The whole house sleeps
(even Becky) and I am kept awake six weeks
by your crippling absence: an irony, I confess,
since for all your years of passionate presence
I failed to cherish you… Now that you’re gone,
Becky (and you were right about her all along)
keeps dreadful company: boorish men who jest
and drink and flirt and she isn’t in the slightest
shocked by any of it. I keep to my room.
I have placed the portrait of George face down
on the dresser. I have folded the gloves you left
in an innermost drawer, as though they were a gift.
Since you spoke of my incapacity for love
I have come to see how my own fierce widowhood
was a shell against the world, a kind of carapace
made up of pride, stupidity and cowardice,
a stay, if you will, against ‘the kind of attachment’
such as yours for me deserved. Poor shredded raiment—
for if it did not keep me warm, it kept me safe,
safe against you and safe against myself.
Last year, at the opera (it was Dido and Aeneas),
I wished to take your hand—in a sudden, artless,
harmless way that would not give you pause—
then didn’t. I think I must have sensed the charge
built up from a decade’s loving in your fingers
(though there you sat, as solid as an anchor)
and feared that touching it would knock me flat.
Now I’m scared I shall die without it.
Dear Dobbin, come back. Like everything else we do
in our mingled, muddy lives, this letter is overdue.
Forgive me if my love arrives belatedly,
but there is a ship can get you here by Friday
and, come all the rain in Christendom,
I shall be waiting for you by the viewing platform.
Dearest William, put out to sea.
Yours, Amelia Sedley.
I could begin by hoping you are well in England
(and I do!) now that the — th regiment has returned
to Chatham; or I could begin by telling you
that reports of worsening weather here are true;
that Georgie thinks you wicked and unkind
for leaving him; that your former servants pine;
or that father, though no better, is no worse, etc.
But this is not a weather-talk sort of letter.
It is after three. The whole house sleeps
(even Becky) and I am kept awake six weeks
by your crippling absence: an irony, I confess,
since for all your years of passionate presence
I failed to cherish you… Now that you’re gone,
Becky (and you were right about her all along)
keeps dreadful company: boorish men who jest
and drink and flirt and she isn’t in the slightest
shocked by any of it. I keep to my room.
I have placed the portrait of George face down
on the dresser. I have folded the gloves you left
in an innermost drawer, as though they were a gift.
Since you spoke of my incapacity for love
I have come to see how my own fierce widowhood
was a shell against the world, a kind of carapace
made up of pride, stupidity and cowardice,
a stay, if you will, against ‘the kind of attachment’
such as yours for me deserved. Poor shredded raiment—
for if it did not keep me warm, it kept me safe,
safe against you and safe against myself.
Last year, at the opera (it was Dido and Aeneas),
I wished to take your hand—in a sudden, artless,
harmless way that would not give you pause—
then didn’t. I think I must have sensed the charge
built up from a decade’s loving in your fingers
(though there you sat, as solid as an anchor)
and feared that touching it would knock me flat.
Now I’m scared I shall die without it.
Dear Dobbin, come back. Like everything else we do
in our mingled, muddy lives, this letter is overdue.
Forgive me if my love arrives belatedly,
but there is a ship can get you here by Friday
and, come all the rain in Christendom,
I shall be waiting for you by the viewing platform.
Dearest William, put out to sea.
Yours, Amelia Sedley.
Display
movement is life
- slogan
of the Women's League of Health and Beauty, 1930‐1939
Hyde Park,
1936. Cold enough for scarves and hats
among the general populace, but not for the fifteen thousand women
from the League of Health and Beauty performing callisthenics
on the grass. It could be snowing, and they of Bromley‐Croydon,
Slough,
Glasgow, Belfast, would don no more than a pair of satin knickers
and a sleeveless satin vest to spin and stretch and bow
the body
beautiful. Athens in London, under a sodden sky,
and Winnie and Molly and Doris metamorphosed.
On the edge of the revolving staves of arms and legs,
pale as comfrey - an army not yet on the move but almost ready -
there are tents for scones and tea. Kiddies, brought to watch
in caps and plaits, wriggle on deckchairs. Their mothers
carry vast, forbidden handbags on their laps and smell
of Lily of the Valley. All around the periphery,
in the huddled clumps of overcoats and smoke,
from offices and railway yards, men joke and talk, gesticulate -
but
mostly they just look, quietly and sharply focused,
like eyeing up the horses at a racecourse, but with much more choice.
For those crammed in steaming picturehouses later, a commentator,
brusquely charmed, declares the perfection of British womanhood:
to them belongs the future! - while the ghost of Mary Bagot Stack,
whose dream this is, smiles back. Their hair cut short, slim,
co‐ordinated as the League of German Maidens or a chorus set
from Hollywood, fit for birth, the women twirl and kick,
do foot‐swings and scissor‐jacks, link hands or fall
suddenly flat as pegs in a collapsible building, then bounce back
up again, for movement is life and they are keeping moving.
To hell with it, they may as well be saying. Twist.
To hell with Lizzie Evans and her bitching hate.
With blood and vinegar. With getting in the tin bath last.
With laddered stockings. With sore wrists at the factory.
I've got the fresh‐air‐body they promised me. Twist. Its electricity.
among the general populace, but not for the fifteen thousand women
from the League of Health and Beauty performing callisthenics
on the grass. It could be snowing, and they of Bromley‐Croydon,
Slough,
Glasgow, Belfast, would don no more than a pair of satin knickers
and a sleeveless satin vest to spin and stretch and bow
and Winnie and Molly and Doris metamorphosed.
On the edge of the revolving staves of arms and legs,
pale as comfrey - an army not yet on the move but almost ready -
there are tents for scones and tea. Kiddies, brought to watch
in caps and plaits, wriggle on deckchairs. Their mothers
carry vast, forbidden handbags on their laps and smell
of Lily of the Valley. All around the periphery,
in the huddled clumps of overcoats and smoke,
from offices and railway yards, men joke and talk, gesticulate -
like eyeing up the horses at a racecourse, but with much more choice.
For those crammed in steaming picturehouses later, a commentator,
brusquely charmed, declares the perfection of British womanhood:
to them belongs the future! - while the ghost of Mary Bagot Stack,
whose dream this is, smiles back. Their hair cut short, slim,
co‐ordinated as the League of German Maidens or a chorus set
from Hollywood, fit for birth, the women twirl and kick,
do foot‐swings and scissor‐jacks, link hands or fall
suddenly flat as pegs in a collapsible building, then bounce back
up again, for movement is life and they are keeping moving.
To hell with it, they may as well be saying. Twist.
To hell with Lizzie Evans and her bitching hate.
With blood and vinegar. With getting in the tin bath last.
With laddered stockings. With sore wrists at the factory.
I've got the fresh‐air‐body they promised me. Twist. Its electricity.
V is For Veteran
A
soldier returned from a war
was how my P6 spelling book put it: I saw
cripples with tin cans for coins
in dusty scarlet, back from some spat of Empire.
Later I became aware of buildings
built in squares around a courtyard
where every room looked down
to a fountain
rinsing and bleaching the light
assiduously as the women
who in folded hats like wings
washed clean their wounds.
My erstwhile stepfather was one
for whom Vietnam
was a constantly recurring dream -
the jungle inching its tendrils
into his lungs until he becomes
half‐man, half‐vine, asphyxiating.
The word itself has a click in it.
It halts before the ending.
Boats left stranded in trees.
The ones that survive are amphibian.
As I speak, there is something muscled
and bloody in the sink
the boy young enough to be my son
spat out and I can't look.
I don't know how he got inside my house.
The stereo is playing Buckets of Rain
by Dylan,
over and over again.
was how my P6 spelling book put it: I saw
cripples with tin cans for coins
in dusty scarlet, back from some spat of Empire.
Later I became aware of buildings
built in squares around a courtyard
where every room looked down
to a fountain
rinsing and bleaching the light
assiduously as the women
who in folded hats like wings
washed clean their wounds.
My erstwhile stepfather was one
for whom Vietnam
was a constantly recurring dream -
the jungle inching its tendrils
into his lungs until he becomes
half‐man, half‐vine, asphyxiating.
The word itself has a click in it.
It halts before the ending.
Boats left stranded in trees.
The ones that survive are amphibian.
As I speak, there is something muscled
and bloody in the sink
the boy young enough to be my son
spat out and I can't look.
I don't know how he got inside my house.
The stereo is playing Buckets of Rain
by Dylan,
over and over again.
Love,
The Nightwatch
Love,
the nightwatch, gloved and gowned, attended.
Your father held my hand. His hands grew bruised
and for days afterwards wore a green and purple coverlet
when he
held you to the light, held your delicate, dented
head, thumbed-in like a water font. They used
stopwatches, clip charts, the distant hoof beats of a heart
(divined,
it seemed, by radio, so your call fell intertwined
with taxicabs, police reports, the weather blowing showery
from the
north) and a beautiful fine white cane,
carved
into a fish hook. I was a haystack the children climbed
and ruined, collapsing almost imperceptibly
at first, then caving in spectacularly as your stuttered and came
-
crook-shouldered, blue, believable, beyond me -
in a thunder of blood, in a flood-plain of intimate stains.
Your father held my hand. His hands grew bruised
and for days afterwards wore a green and purple coverlet
head, thumbed-in like a water font. They used
stopwatches, clip charts, the distant hoof beats of a heart
with taxicabs, police reports, the weather blowing showery
and ruined, collapsing almost imperceptibly
at first, then caving in spectacularly as your stuttered and came
in a thunder of blood, in a flood-plain of intimate stains.
Baltimore
In other
noises, I hear my children crying -
in older children playing on the street
past bedtime, their voices buoyant
in the staggered light; or in the baby
next door, wakeful and petulant
through too‐thin walls; or in the constant
freakish pitch of Westside Baltimore
on The Wire, its sirens and rapid gunfire,
its beleaguered cops haranguing kids
as young as six for propping up
the
dealers on the corners, their swagger
and spitfire speech; or in the white space
between radio stations when no voice
comes at all and the crackling static
might be swallowing whole a child's
small call for help; even in silence itself,
its material loops and folds enveloping
a ghost cry, one I've made up, but heard,
that has me climbing the stairs, pausing
in the hall, listening, listening hard,
to - at
most - rhythmical breathing
but more often than not to nothing, the air
of the landing thick with something missed,
dust motes, the overhang of blankets, a ship
on the Lough through the window, infant sleep.
in older children playing on the street
past bedtime, their voices buoyant
in the staggered light; or in the baby
next door, wakeful and petulant
through too‐thin walls; or in the constant
freakish pitch of Westside Baltimore
on The Wire, its sirens and rapid gunfire,
its beleaguered cops haranguing kids
as young as six for propping up
and spitfire speech; or in the white space
between radio stations when no voice
comes at all and the crackling static
might be swallowing whole a child's
small call for help; even in silence itself,
its material loops and folds enveloping
a ghost cry, one I've made up, but heard,
that has me climbing the stairs, pausing
in the hall, listening, listening hard,
but more often than not to nothing, the air
of the landing thick with something missed,
dust motes, the overhang of blankets, a ship
on the Lough through the window, infant sleep.
Shadows
in Siberia According to Kapuściński
Are
upright –
cast not by sunlight but by frozen breath:
we breathe
and are enveloped in an outline
and when we pass,
this outline stays suspended, not tethered
to our ankles
as our sun-shadows are. A boy was here –
fantastically dressed
against the arctic frost like an heirloom glass
in bubble wrap –
he has disappeared into the portico
of himself. Not even Alice,
with her knack for finding weaknesses
in the shellac
of this world, left so deft a calling card.
cast not by sunlight but by frozen breath:
we breathe
and are enveloped in an outline
and when we pass,
this outline stays suspended, not tethered
to our ankles
as our sun-shadows are. A boy was here –
fantastically dressed
against the arctic frost like an heirloom glass
in bubble wrap –
he has disappeared into the portico
of himself. Not even Alice,
with her knack for finding weaknesses
in the shellac
of this world, left so deft a calling card.
Sinéad
Morrissey reading Shadows in Siberia
According to Kapuściński
Shostakovich
The wind
and its instruments were my secret teachers.
In Podolskaya Street I played piano for my mother
– note for note without a music sheet – while the wind
in the draughty flat kept up: tapping its fattened hand
against the glass, moaning though the stove, banging
a door repeatedly out on the landing –
the ghost in the machine of Beethoven's Two Preludes
Through All the Major Keys, that said they lied.
Later I
stood in a wheat field and heard the wind make music
from everything it touched. The top notes were the husks:
fractious but nervous, giddy, little-voiced,
while underneath a strong strange melody pulsed
as though the grain was rigging, or a forest.
In all
my praise and plainsong I wrote down
the sounds of a man's boots from behind the mountain.
In Podolskaya Street I played piano for my mother
– note for note without a music sheet – while the wind
in the draughty flat kept up: tapping its fattened hand
against the glass, moaning though the stove, banging
a door repeatedly out on the landing –
the ghost in the machine of Beethoven's Two Preludes
Through All the Major Keys, that said they lied.
from everything it touched. The top notes were the husks:
fractious but nervous, giddy, little-voiced,
while underneath a strong strange melody pulsed
as though the grain was rigging, or a forest.
the sounds of a man's boots from behind the mountain.
The
Party Bazaar
Ingrid
in her shawl’s been here since nine,
burdening the tables on loan
from the church downstairs with Babushka dolls
and caviar, handkerchiefs and wine
from Yugoslavia, Bulgarian perfume.
My brother and I ask for a job
and are handed pink-and-white posters
of Peace & Détente to decorate the room.
It’s trickier than we thought
to stick them straight so secretly we give up.
Almost everyone’s smoking.
In the background, “Kalinka” on cassette
belted out by Red Army Choir
wobbles towards its peak. There’s tea,
coffee, Irish stew, and a cool display
of anti-Mrs Thatcher paraphernalia –
pens in the shape of nails for her coffin
we’ll buy and use in school.
Shop stewards come, and sympathisers
who, once a year, like Christians,
demonstrate their faith, the odd
bewildered lured-in shopper looking for soap,
or socks, but mostly it’s just us:
Card Carriers and the Kids Thereof,
filling up the air with fevered talk. By four,
Rosemary Street’s ablaze in the solstice dark.
We pack what’s left of the wooden trains and vodka
into crates for another year and repair
to the Duke of York, where once
an actual Soviet Representative – tall, thin –
in frost-inflected English gave a speech,
and I clutched my lemonade and was convinced.
burdening the tables on loan
from the church downstairs with Babushka dolls
and caviar, handkerchiefs and wine
from Yugoslavia, Bulgarian perfume.
My brother and I ask for a job
and are handed pink-and-white posters
of Peace & Détente to decorate the room.
It’s trickier than we thought
to stick them straight so secretly we give up.
Almost everyone’s smoking.
In the background, “Kalinka” on cassette
belted out by Red Army Choir
wobbles towards its peak. There’s tea,
coffee, Irish stew, and a cool display
of anti-Mrs Thatcher paraphernalia –
pens in the shape of nails for her coffin
we’ll buy and use in school.
Shop stewards come, and sympathisers
who, once a year, like Christians,
demonstrate their faith, the odd
bewildered lured-in shopper looking for soap,
or socks, but mostly it’s just us:
Card Carriers and the Kids Thereof,
filling up the air with fevered talk. By four,
Rosemary Street’s ablaze in the solstice dark.
We pack what’s left of the wooden trains and vodka
into crates for another year and repair
to the Duke of York, where once
an actual Soviet Representative – tall, thin –
in frost-inflected English gave a speech,
and I clutched my lemonade and was convinced.
Last Winter
was not like last winter, we said, when
winter
had ground its iron teeth in earnest: Belfast
colder than Moscow and a total lunar eclipse
hanging its Chinese lantern over the solstice.
Last winter we wore jackets into November
and lost our gloves, geraniums persisted,
our new pot-bellied stove sat unlit night
after night and inside our lungs and throats,
embedded in our cells, viruses churned out
relaxed, unkillable replicas of themselves
in the friendlier temperatures. Our son
went under. We'd lie awake, not touching,
and listen to him cough. He couldn't walk
for weakness in the morning. Thoracic,
the passages and hallways in our house
got stopped with what we would not say –
how, on our wedding day, we'd all-at-once
felt shy to be alone together, back
from the cacophony in my tiny, quiet flat
and surrounded by flowers.
had ground its iron teeth in earnest: Belfast
colder than Moscow and a total lunar eclipse
hanging its Chinese lantern over the solstice.
Last winter we wore jackets into November
and lost our gloves, geraniums persisted,
our new pot-bellied stove sat unlit night
after night and inside our lungs and throats,
embedded in our cells, viruses churned out
relaxed, unkillable replicas of themselves
in the friendlier temperatures. Our son
went under. We'd lie awake, not touching,
and listen to him cough. He couldn't walk
for weakness in the morning. Thoracic,
the passages and hallways in our house
got stopped with what we would not say –
how, on our wedding day, we'd all-at-once
felt shy to be alone together, back
from the cacophony in my tiny, quiet flat
and surrounded by flowers.
That
their days were not like our days,
the different people who lived in sepia –
more buttoned, colder, with slower wheels,
shut off, sunk back in the unwakeable house
for all we call and knock. And even the man
with the box and the flaming torch
who made his servants stand so still
their faces itched can't offer us what it cost
to watch the foreyard being lost
to cream and shadow, the pierced sky
placed in a frame. Irises under the windowsill
were the colour of Ancient Rome.
the different people who lived in sepia –
more buttoned, colder, with slower wheels,
shut off, sunk back in the unwakeable house
for all we call and knock. And even the man
with the box and the flaming torch
who made his servants stand so still
their faces itched can't offer us what it cost
to watch the foreyard being lost
to cream and shadow, the pierced sky
placed in a frame. Irises under the windowsill
were the colour of Ancient Rome.
Solas Nua, April 29, 2021.
On
Balance poetry review – an imagination that never closes. By Kate Kellaway. The Guardian, October 24, 2017.
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