Wolf Tongue
Page 14
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Snow blurs the moon
and the sky is whipped by the blizzard’s tail.
it is all like smoke
in the swiftly changing heads of the trees.
PEARL
(1995/1997)
for Jackie
Looking Down From The West Window
I smashed my wings
against the rain-soaked deck
and was happy you lifted me
into your safe fingers and palms.
If not too disgusted, hold me
close forever keenly.
Sweet Jesus: Pearl’s Prayer
Listen, hark, attend; wait a moment
as they used to say
in the ancient tongue of literacy, before
language was poisoned to a wreckage, which
you will find for a fee (going up)
in your earpiece, inside
the wainscoted foyer
of the Museum of Stupidity down in the dumps:
Permit me to say this on a grey roofslate, as I protect
my poor writing, I can’t do joined up, with soaked forearm
from the driving rain – I am Pearl.
Please estrange your children, and your bairns’ bairns
from terrible tabloidations, scored into
your blood in the sorriest ink.
O paranoid Marxist Cambridge prefects,
self-appointed guarantors of consonants and vowels
and arrangement of everyday sentences, placing
of punctuation marks, with which Pearl
wished to be in steady flux, she said
with fingers, eyes, thumbs and palms. Listen.
When the borage flowers closed at night
she moved against me, rain lashed facing
west to the law, whispering: There is so much
wickedness.
They want to tax my ABC, they want to jail my tongue.
I dream their high-up heather deaths
though I do not emit articulate sound.
I am just a common white swan.
Fierce I am when I want, want
my milky hands on my destroyers, rive
them apart like a marauding riever, or
down south, roll you in the Nene, without
Dunlop lace-up boots, one bare foot
should do it, spate or trickle you’ll be face down.
Spade job later, midnight special, I’ve got
one somewhere, I know mam has; bury
you all deep, lead tunnels or out on the Fens.
I cannot cease to dream and speak of Pearl.
Pearl’s Utter Brilliance
Argent moon with bruised shawl
discreetly shines upon my frozen tongue tonight
and I am grinning handclap glad.
We loved so much the lunar light
on rawbone law or splashing in the marigold beds,
our gazing faces broken in the stream.
Taut, not taught, being kept from school
was a disgrace, single word ‘idiot’ chalked
on the yard wall: soaked in sleet, sliding
in snow beneath a raft of sighs, waiting
for the roar of an engine revved before
daybreak, as the world, the permanent wound
I would never know in sentence construction, fled
away from my heather-crashing feet, splash happy
kneefalls along the tumblestones,
whip-winged plovers shattering the dew.
Each day up here I am fiercely addressed
by the tips of the trees; said all I could
while heifers moaned in the stalls, clopping
of hooves my steaming, shitting
beast accompaniment. And these giant clouds.
Pity? Put it in the slurry with the rest of your woes.
I am Pearl, queen of the dale.
Pearl Says
Down from the rain-soaked law
and the rim of the world
where even on misty nights
I can see the little lights
of Penrith and Kendal and, yes,
Appleby, and hear the clatter of unshoed
horses which pound like my heart,
I also sense the moss greened underwater
stones of the Eden to the west. I trim
the wick for mam’s asleep now, dad
long gone to Cumberland and work, and
read read my exercise books filled
with stories by Bar, my trout-catching
hero, dragons and space ships, sketches
in crayons you can’t buy anymore.
When I stand on the top road and bow
in sleet, knuckle-bunching cold, or
slide over dead nettles on snow, do
not mistake my flung out silhouetted
limbs for distant arches and viaducts.
I am not bringing you legendary feats
of sophisticated engineering. I in
worry eat my fist, soak my sandwich
in saliva, chew my lip a thousand times
without any bought impediment. Please
believe me when my mind says and
my eyes send telegraphs: I am Pearl.
So low a nobody I am beneath the cowslip’s
shadow, next to the heifers’ hooves.
I have a roof over my head, but none
in my mouth. All my words are homeless.
No Such Thing
Grassblade glintstreak in one of the last mornings
before I come to meet you, Pearl,
as the rain shies. How bright and sudden the dogrose,
briefly touched by dew, flaming
between the deep emerald and smoky blue.
Dogrose, pink as Pearl’s lips, no
lipstick required, what’s that mam, no
city chemist or salon. We set
our colour charts in the rain
by feldspar heaved from the streambed;
cusloppe, burn peat in summer
and wild trampled marigolds.
Pearl, somewhere there is a stern receiver
and all accounts are open in the rain.
Once more through the heifer muck
and into the brilliant cooling of the watermint beds.
Sky to the west today, where you are, Pearl, is
a fantastic freak bruise which hurts the world.
Coward rain scared of our joy refuses to come.
Deep despair destroys and dents delight
now that I have pledged my future to you, Pearl,
from the edge of the roaring bypass, from
the home of the broken bottle and fiery
battleground of the sieged estate.
Mony Ryal Ray
For urthely herte myght not suffyse
– PERLE
Skybrightness drove me
to the cool of the lake
to muscle the wind
and wrestle the clouds
and forever dream of Pearl.
O Pearl, to speak in sentences, using
all the best vowels and consonants, is argent sure.
Smoke drifts over slow as Pearl’s fingers
fanning through the borage groves
and the world vigorous again
in pursuit of renewal.
Pearl into Hexham
with cleft palate: the market, into Robbs
for curtains believe it or not, orders
written out by mam to be handed over, post
office adjacent to the war memorial,
bus station.
Billy driving Pearl home on the Allenheads bus, off
here, pet?, and round
the turning circle
by the heritage centre
to be opened by an adulterous prince.
Pearl saying when asked by a dale stranger,
‘Where’s the way to The Grapes?�
��:
a-a-a-a-a-a-a-.
Only the magnificent peewit more eloquent than Pearl.
No Buses To Damascus
Wonder Pearl distemper pale, queen
of Blanchland who rode mare Bonny
by stooks and stiles in the land
of waving wings and borage blue
and striving storms of stalks and stems.
Pearl, who could not speak, eventually
wrote: Your family feuds are ludicrous.
Only my eyes can laugh at you.
She handed over springwater under a stern look.
We fell asleep at Blackbird Ford
named by princes Bar and Paul of Sparty Lea.
We splashed and swam and made the brown trout mad.
Dawdled in our never-ending pleasure over
earth-enfolded sheephorns
by rivermist webs, half-hidden moss crowns.
Up a height or down the dale in mist or shine
in heather or heifer-trampled marigold
the curlew-broken silence sang its volumes.
Leaning on the lichen on the Leadgate Road,
Pearl said: a-a-a-a-a-, pointing with perfectly poised
index finger towards the rusty coloured dry stone wall
which contrasted so strongly with her milky skin.
The congenital fissure in the roof of her mouth
laid down with priceless gems, beaten lustrous copper
and barely hidden seams of gold.
Pearl Suddenly Awake
Banged my right hand
against the chipped middle drawer
in the corner of the west-facing bedroom, sucking
home the knuckle blood.
Once more I rose
and kneeled, praying to God, and rose again,
my tongue in everlasting chains.
Bless him asleep with his yellow hair,
worn out with wandering, map-reading
the laws and lanes and trails.
Cowslips, our rushing ancient stream,
years of rain sweeping over the cairns,
beautifully soft, distinctly-shaped moss and lichen
enfolding the retrieved tumblestones,
steps to our great and mad adventures.
We laughed off cuts and bruises falling in the tadpole pools.
In my mind at the top of the valley,
roar of lead ore poured crashing
into the ghosts of now forsaken four-wheeled bogies
distinctly off the rails. They –
you call it government – are killing everything
now. Hard hats abandoned in heather. Locked-up
company huts
useless to bird, beast or humankind. Tags
in the rims: Ridley, Marshall,
McKinnon and Smith. Deserted
disconnected telephones, codes
and names I could not read.
Dead wires
left harping in the high wind
that always sang to me.
Day dawn dripping of dew
from those greenly dark feathers of fern, beneath
fragrant needles of fir and pine
as the stars swing into place
above our double gaze at heaven.
Fever
Pearl, I’m singing Fever to you
but still in the bland auditorium the stupid voices explode.
No one but you is listening.
We are back in the sheepfield chasing a rabbit again.
The rain is from the dark west tonight, raced along
by the sharply pushed-out breath of Pearl.
She has tramped with her cleft to the law, soaked cairn,
OS number recorded once for future use
but forgotten in the slap of heifer rumps.
In her little-fingered grip of the full-buttoned coat,
hair maddened by such a storm, lips pursed; my heroine, not
bothered with Kendal Mintcake, tugger of shirts and cuffs and hair.
She opens her swan mouth and rain pours in from north
and south and west, Atlantic squalls from Donegal.
They cannot lubricate her speech.
A baked canyon there, my Pearl.
At 3 I woke, rolled and twisted all my milky wrists
around the iron bedposts, heart ransomed to Pearl, her
Woolworth butterfly blue plastic clip, still made in Britain
then, her flighty bow.
Due east she looks, lashed by rain one side, yonder
just mist wet, heather splashes in the gale, towards the broken
ovens of manufacture and employment, and to the new units
in green and red, with almost literate noticeboards,
development corporation
fast-growing shrubs (emerald tops and silver undersides:
pound notes with roots), not with
the tramp, tramp, tramp
of men and women going home.
Transport of the rain where Pearl is, is
taken care of forever,
long after we have gone, into the cracked peat
we have not cut, taken to the channels,
onto becks and springs, to the borage groves
and streaming watermint.
At 4 I woke again
with torment, unpunished badness and unjudged blame.
That night, Pearl faced the lightning alone.
She could not even speak to encourage her own bravery.
Last seen by me tongue far out as it would go
just acting like a gutter or a gargoyle
praying for St Elmo’s fire up here on the Cushat Law
to surge her diction down the alphabet trail.
The Shells Her Auburn Hair Did Show
(for Stephen Bierley)
Good morning Pearl, good morning John,
good morning the Jesus Christ Almighty;
good morning Stephen, transferring
to the Alps from Lac de Madine:
I know your heart’s in Helpston today.
Pearl walked barefoot down the rain-soaked flags last night, fearful
of smoke and fire, with words on the slate: Where do I go
to bang MY head? Where will I find a workshop
sustained by Strasbourg grants
and European funny money, with instruments
modern enough to replace the canyon in the roof of my mouth?
Government? What does that mean?
Stephen, best friend of Barry, travelling in France, father
of Rachel and Timothy, husband of Sarah, what
does a government do? Can it make you speak?
I leak truth like a wound, sore not seen to.
Call me a scab if you wish, I’m still plain Pearl.
Wild Knitting was named after me, I know you did, Bar.
Every day – I wake at four – tongue fever grasps me
and I am possessed: though
my screen is blank and charmless to the human core
I have an unbending desire to marry consonants and vowels
and mate them together
in what you call phrases and sentences
which can become – imagine it – books!
I’d like to sit down with Stephen, inside the borage groves, sing him
my songs of the stream.
But of course I cannot.
My cuticles above singular fields
of harvested grain, when torched stubble is nowhere
near the heat of the burning grief
in my illiterate heart, when I can only hope to extinguish it
with unfettered tears, at four in the morning, when no one else
is awake.
I walk to the wetted garden where the lawn is short.
All the skies are leased anyway. Nothing is owned
by humans. It is an illusion nightmare.
You fall through the universe
clinging to unravelled knots and breaking strings.
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John eating grass. Percy drinking brine.
No B&Q in my day. No proper ABC.
My mouth a wind-tunnel. I flew like a moth in its blast.
Take my hand and put me right.
This is the end of the bulletin from the end of the road.
Pearl Alone
Yes, I am not emitting articulate sound.
I take my stand and – deliberately – refuse to plead.
There is no adoration in my mute appeal.
My tongue a pad or cone for the trumpet’s bell.
Tongue-tied, bereft of ABC, I lap
and soak my whistle at the law’s rim.
In mood moments
I say smash down the chalkboard:
let it stay black.
Shake my chained tongue, I’ll fake a growl – a-a-a-a-a-.
Dog my steps, I am wet-toed to the spring
for mam’s tea: spam on Sundays
and chips if there is coal.
In the Orient I would be a good servant
willing to please.
Damping of strings my speciality,
an hired mourner
for the rest of my days: gazer
at umbrellas and rain.
No use for owt else up here
except wiping my legs of heifer muck
and fetching the four o’clock milk.
In the byre alone I weep
at the imagined contrivance
of straps and wires
locking my loll-tongue gargoyle head.
My muzzle gushes rain
and I wince when people speak to mam,
giving me their sideways look.
My eyes go furious and I stamp, stamp, stamp.
Pulse fever even in Hartfell sleet.
Loud tumult, what there is of my mind
tumbled into the lashing trees. Yes,
I love falling, caught momentarily
through each tall command of branches, amazed once more
at the borage blue sky
in another September afternoon
with tongue spouting, soaking the cones, thudding
to the very ground, disturbing
all the birds and worms and wasps and bees.
Don’t count on me for fun
among the towering cowslips,
but please don’t crush my heart.