Greenham Common, 80
Hare in the snow, 229
Hare in the snow cresting, 229
‘Has she gone then?’ they asked, 152
Heimat, 199
He is the one you can count on, 226
He lived next door all his life, 227
Here at my worktop, foil-wrapping a silver salmon, 228
Here I am in the desert knowing nothing, 200
Her fast asleep face turns from me, 86
Heron, 177
Herring girl, 58
He’s going on holiday to lonely, 192
Holiday to Lonely, 192
How hushed the sentence is this morning, 43
Hungry Thames, 244
Hungry Thames, I walk over the bridge, 244
I can’t say why so many coffin-makers, 46
Ice coming, 20
I’d climbed the crab-apple in the wind, 179
If I wanted totems, in place of the poles, 218
If no revolution come, 83
If only, 38
If only I’d stayed up till four in the morning, 38
If you had said the words ‘to the forest’, 186
I hung up the sheets in moonlight, 85
I imagine you sent back from Africa, 98
I know that no one dare judge another’s need, 230
I lay and heard voices, 50
In a back garden I’m painting, 69
In a wood near Turku, 92
In Berber’s Ice Cream Parlour, 184
In deep water, 103
I never stop listening to you sing, 237
In memoriam Cyril Smith 1913–1945, 99
In Rodmell Garden, 68
In the chemist’s at night-time, 77
In the corded hollows of the wood, 182
In the Desert Knowing Nothing, 200
In the goods yard the tracks are unmarked, 62
In the tea house, 120
In the tea house the usual, 120
In the tents, 116
In the weightlessness of time and our passage within it, 105
In the white sheets I gave you, 205
Inside out, 47
I remember years ago, that we had Christmas roses, 91
I see the boys at the breakwater, 167
I should like to be buried in a summer forest, 233
I should like to be buried in a summer forest, 233
‘It is finished,’ said Christ. Blood ebbed from his face, 22
Its big red body ungulps, 211
It’s evening on the river, 177
It’s not the four-wheeled drive crawler, 136
It’s past nine and breakfast is over, 68
It starts with breaking into the wood, 55
It was not always a dry well, 176
It was the green lorry with its greasy curtain, 18
It was too hot, that was the argument, 142
It was you I heard, your tiger pad on the stairs, 45
I’ve approached him since childhood, 99
Jacob’s drum, 15
Lady Macduff and the primroses, 104
Lambkin, 149
Landscape from the Monet Exhibition at Cardiff, 93
Later my stepson will uncover a five-inch live shell, 135
Lead me with your cold, sure hand, 190
Lemon sole, 50
Let us think that we are pilgrims, 155
Little Ellie and the timeshare salesman, 245
Long long have I looked for you, 54
Lutherans, 187
Malta, 153
Mary Shelley, 105
Missile launcher passing at night, 124
Mr Lear has left a ring in his room, 39
Mr Lear’s ring, 39
Music plays gently. Yesterday’s morning paper, 249
My nephews with almond faces, 79
My sad descendants, 111
My train halts in the snowfilled station, 93
Near Dawlish, 86
Nearly May Day, 168
Need, 230
New crops, 139
Next door, 226
Next door/is the same as ours, but different, 226
Not going to the forest, 186
Now I write off a winter of growth, 75
Now the snowdrop, the wood-anemone, the crocus, 104
Now winter comes and I am half-asleep, 244
O engines, 139
Of course they’re dead, or this is a film, 194
Off the West Pier, 180
Often when the bread tin is empty, 94
Old Jeffery begins his night music, 144
Old warriors and women, 31
Ollie and Charles at St Andrew’s Park, 90
On circuit from Heptonstall Chapel, 146
One more for the beautiful table, 148
One year he painted his front door yellow, 227
One yellow chicken, 178
On his skin the stink, 195
On not writing certain poems, 162
On smooth buttercup fields, 156
On the white path at noon when the sun, 247
O that old cinema of memory, 16
Our day off, agreed by the wind, 116
Out of the Blue, 12
O wintry ones, my sad descendants, 111
Patrick at four years old on Bonfire Night, 112
Patrick, I cannot write, 72
Patrick I, 72
Patrick II, 73
Pedalo, 207
Permafrost, 133
Pharaoh’s daughter, 70
Piers Plowman: The Crucifixion & Harrowing of Hell, 22
Pilgrims, 155
Ploughing the roughlands, 136
Poem for December 28, 79
Poem for hidden women, 81
Poem in a Hotel, 193
Poem on the Obliteration of 100,000 Iraqi Soldiers, 201
Porpoise washed up on the beach, 102
Preaching at Gwennap, 145
Preaching at Gwennap, silk, 145
Privacy of rain, 163
Rain. A plump splash, 163
Rapunzel, 117
Refrigerator days, 242
Restless, the pæony truss tosses about, 132
Rinsing, 182
Rubbing Down the Horse, 197
Russian doll, 59
Safe period, 174
Sailing to Cuba, 179
Say we’re in a compartment at night, 36
Scan at 8 weeks, 206
Seal run, 128
See this ’un here, this little bone needle, 58
Shadows of my mother against a wall, 140
She comes close to perfection, 37
She kept Uncle Will’s telegram, 117
She’s next to nowhere, feeling no cold, 236
She swam to me smiling, her teeth, 207
Ships on brown water, 32
Sisters leaving before the dance, 160
Skips, 218
Sleeveless, 41
Small, silvery, slipping, 248
Smoke, 31
Snowdrops, Mary’s tapers, 154
Snow Queen, 54
Snug a devil’s toenail embedded, 47
So how decisive a house is, 71
Sometimes in the rough garden of city spaces, 232
Speak to me in the only language, 12
St Paul’s, 78
Sylvette Scrubbing, 215
Tall ship hanging out at the horizon, 60
Tea at Brandt’s, 249
That lake lies along the shore, 164
That morning when the potato tops rusted, 202
That old cinema of memory, 16
That’s better, he says, he says, 149
That violet-haired lady, 52
That violet-haired lady, dowager-, 52
The air-blue gown, 109
The apple fall, 69
The argument, 142
The bald glasshouses stretch here for miles, 143
The bathers, where are they? The sea is quite empty, 166
The Bike Lane, 194
&n
bsp; The blessing, 48
The boy in the boat, the tip of the pole, 229
The bride’s nights in a strange village, 96
The butcher’s daughter, 56
The coffin-makers, 46
The conception, 205
The cuckoo game, 55
The damson, 67
The deserted table, 88
The Diving Reflex, 212
The dream-life of priests, 158
The dry glasshouse is almost empty, 143
The dry well, 176
The father is a writer; the son, 89
The footfall, 45
The form, 42
The grass looks different in another country, 151
The greenfield ghost, 57
The greenfield ghost is not much of a ghost, 57
The halls are thronged, the grand staircase murmurous, 48
The hard-hearted husband, 152
The haunting of Epworth, 144
The horse landscape, 113
The land pensions, 137
The land pensions, like rockets, 137
The last day of the exhausted month, 87
The long arm hangs flat to his lap, 147
The man on the roof, 13
The man who gave little Ellie his forever, 245
The mare with her short legs heavily mudcaked, 146
The night chemist, 77
The other babies were more bitter than you, 73
The Our Father, the moment of fear, 203
The panting of buses through caves of memory, 17
The parachute packers, 100
The parachute packers with white faces, 100
The peach house, 143
The plum tree, 108
The plum was my parents’ tree, 108
The point of not returning, 42
The point of not returning/is to go back, but never quite back, 42
The Polish husband, 66
The potatoes come out of the earth bright, 128
The rain’s coming in, 36
The rain was falling down in slow pulses, 141
There he stands, blind on slivovitz, 41
There’s a stone set in the car-park wall, 19
The room creaked like a pair of lungs, 177
The scattering, 234
The sea’s a featureless blaze, 153
The sea skater, 119
The sentence, 43
The Silent Man in Waterstones, 220
The slowly moving river in summer, 70
The soft fields part in hedges, each, 124
The spill, 34
The summer cabins are padlocked, 92
The surgeon husband, 228
The thing about a saddle is that second, 197
Thetis, 115
Thetis, mother of all mothers, 115
The traffic halted, 66
The Wardrobe Mistress, 221
The wasp, 244
The white receiver, 206
The winter fairs are all over, 91
The wood-pigeon rolls soft notes off its breast, 140
The writer’s son, 89
They are hiding away in the desert, 201
The Yellow Sky, 202
They fly/straight-necked and barely white, 53
This evening clouds darken the street quickly, 78
This is Jacob’s drum, 15
This is the wardrobe mistress, touching, 220
This is what I want, 217
This path is silky with dust, 204
Those shady girls, 158
Those shady girls on the green side of the street, 158
Those words like oil, loose in the world, 34
Three Ways of Recovering a Body, 191
Three workmen with blue pails, 171
Tiger lookout, 242
Tiger Moth caterpillar, 243
Time by Accurist, 219
To Betty, swimming, 183
Today in a horse landscape, 113
Today is barred with darkness of winter, 80
Tonight I’m eating the past, 109
Tonight there’s a crowd in my head, 235
To Virgil, 190
Two miles or so beyond, 213
Two of us on the tired pavement, 40
Two spines curve in, 243
Uncle Will’s telegram, 117
Up at the park once more, 90
US 1st Division Airborne Ranger at rest in Honduras, 147
Viking cat in the dark, 238
Virgin with Two Cardigans, 19
Waiting. I’m here waiting, 193
Walking at all angles, 14
Washed silk jacket by Mesa, 219
Weaning, 74
We are men, not beasts, 250
We’re strung out on the plain’s upthirst, 181
What I get I bring home to you, 130
When I held you up to my cheek you were cold, 59
When my grandmother died my father
eulogised her, 13
When you grow tired of the flame, 240
When You’ve Got, 222
When you’ve got the plan of your life, 222
Where have you been, my little daughter, 56
Where have you gone, 67
Where the great ship sank I am, 212
Whichever way I turned on the radio, 187
Whooper swans, 53
Wild strawberries, 130
Winter 1955, 181
Winter fairs, 91
With his hands he teaches wind to move, 241
Without remission, 35
With short, harsh breaths, 44
You came back to life in its sweetness, 198
You put your hand over mine and whispered, 162
Your dry voice from the centre of the bed, 174
You’re breast-up in the bubbling spaces you make for yourself, 183
Zelda, 64
Copyright
Copyright © Helen Dunmore 1983, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2001
First published 2001 by
Bloodaxe Books Ltd,
Highgreen,
Tarset,
Northumberland NE48 1RP.
This ebook edition first published in 2011.
www.bloodaxebooks.com
For further information about Bloodaxe titles please visit our website or write to the above address for a catalogue.
The right of Helen Dunmore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN: 978 1 78037 009 5 ebook
Out of the Blue Page 18