Cusp

by Graham Mort

  at the moon – all helter

  skelter in the branches –

  the hedgerows swithering;

  then how a hare ran from

  a field where cows lay

  sleeping on their own

  sweet muck and suckled

  teats; the way you shouted

  Hare! Hare! the way it came

  bounding to us like you’d

  pronounced it from that

  landslide of dark in your

  head to its dull utterance

  of bone on steel on bone

  that told us it was all up and

  done with hare, that moon

  had gulped its wide, wet-black

  eye to a glitter-ball of seed.

  The car panted, the hare

  lay wrapped in silence

  swaddled in the plaid

  of branch-crossed light –

  moon’s chiaroscuro – its

  dying breath casting a curse

  of frost across the road.

  You were scared wretched

  at that death, but I’ll swear

  on my child’s life that a

  line of hares watched us

  from the brightened black

  horizon, that a buck reared

  and lunged and boxed

  grinning in the moon as we

  dragged our trophy, its

  cricked neck and torn ear

  and broken jaw, to lie with

  the jack and wheel-brace

  snow shovel, spare shoes

  my father’s cuffed tweed coat.

  Back home we parked

  hushed the engine’s moan

  fumbled open the boot and

  – Christ! – that stink of hare

  rank sex and blood, death’s

  ether in the gunsmoke of

  our breath, your hand on

  my sleeve, your eyelids flinching

  from the porch light’s glare.

  Asleep that night, and

  deep for once, I stood on

  a creaking lake-wide

  fantasy of ice, my veins

  crystal, my knuckles

  numb, hearing your breath

  go round me like a saw.

  The paunched hare hung

  in the kitchen, its fat balls

  veined and glistening; the

  moon’s white petals bloomed

  on window glass; a vase

  of hyacinths breathed

  out their early scent.

  I woke to hear the bypass

  hiss with scythes, remembered

  how the final stook is called

  the hare, how all harvest is

  death and sacrifice, turned

  on my back to hear a horse

  cough, jackdaws shuffle

  in the flue, owls shiver

  needles in the Douglas fir.

  I was trying to wake, to

  shake off that dream, still

  drifted in sleep, in sheets

  of creased snow, feeling air

  parch my throat, blood

  tingle in my fingernails

  my mind sinking on a

  tilting lid of ice – and my face

  blurred you said, blurred or

  absent where I’d gone under

  the hare’s frozen smile.

  I woke wanting you, my

  hands unraveling the silks

  of your most hidden, most

  wanton self, rousing your

  blush of wakefulness

  lapping your belly from the

  brimful saucer of your hips

  until your body seemed

  to clarify and ring, to

  burn mine, hot as ice

  ringing its sunken bell

  of purest crystal, our

  lips burning, ice to ice

  as we fucked away our

  deaths in that obsidian

  dark and hare’s beard of

  blood melted to tiles

  dripped a deep red O.

  Then morning’s waking

  in milk-thistle light, the

  curtains’ gauze, the

  bed’s sweet ghazal

  with us in it; how you

  slept, mumbling and drowsy

  and quick with child in

  our brittle room of glass.

  I thought of the hook

  the gutted hare, saw

  bruises risen to your

  ribs – blued iron laid

  on cream skin –

  remembered that blotch

  of damson, the hare’s

  prodigious sex, then the

  sense of something

  out there, out of reach

  watching us and unafraid.

  Carp at Meyrals

  Grey-backed

  bronze-finned

  platinum-scaled

  sculling water clouds

  when sediment

  scuffs up –

  gills raking out

  oxygen to their

  chilled blood.

  Aimless as thoughts

  for all we know;

  everything beyond

  the lens of water

  indifferent:

  the metal bellies

  of water beetles;

  blue iris, mint

  marjoram;

  the breaking/healing

  edge where air is;

  a white globe curving

  falling beyond

  its counterweight

  as dark comes;

  swallows touching

  down as death’s

  beaked signifier.

  What do they

  care in which

  lost tongue we try

  to speak of them?

  They fin an element

  beyond translation

  beyond difference

  so unutterably.

  Next

  The track’s desire to be elsewhere

  carries her from the soaked grass

  of lawns.

  When she touches currant trees, the

  scent will be what she remembers:

  the smell of things returned to.

  Exhausted from another winter

  grass spikes pasture that will

  waver in late-August heat.

  Too bad the house is dark, ugly;

  too bad workmen are replacing

  stones that will fall again

  from its walls.

  Even daisies lie stunned by cold;

  the arrogance of buds falters, the

  river chokes for air – its sputter

  of white water.

  Whinberries rot on heather slopes;

  sloes acidify, sucking her wry

  mouth dry.

  The past is its own season, renewable

  and lost; the track soothes her – a white

  scar in the valley becoming nothing else –

  unable to move, taking her into

  this day, the next.

  Italian Hawks

  They’re lodged deep in the

  cool of the church steeple, nested

  behind an iron staple that binds

  the wall into a kind of

  faith with gravity.

  Too fast to recognise at first –

  wings and tails splayed for landing –

  these kestrels are cinnamon and

  grey, barred with black

  and bold to feed.

  Heat sends up its prayer; falcon

  and tercel own the valley, following

  the river’s ribbon of sky where

  olive trees run wild from

  parched terraces.

  The young wait, huge-eyed

  hook-beaked, all hunger and glistening

  baby-down, crowding the ledge to

  snap at flies, astonished

  at their own reflex.

  The tercel’s plumed dart

  slips into sight and their high keening

  starts – M
e! Me! Me! – they pogo

  at the brink in tremulous

  selfishness and fear.

  Something dead is tossed

  to their clamour of kindling sibling

  hate; they crowd the nest-hole

  under the bell’s cracked

  angelus of jade.

  Below, the organ swells with

  funeral chords, the priest intoning –

  his lips tarnished with death

  the faithful down on their

  ruined knees.

  A squadron of swifts chitters

  past the hawks’ eyes, broadsiding

  insect thermals, then lost

  into a grey-green haze:

  pure afterthought.

  We watch the hawks feed

  then leave, each chick boldening

  stretching a wing, their claws

  gripping an edge, then flesh

  then sky, then bone.

  They rend life and sense

  from air; their breed is burgeoning

  erasing history from stone

  flying their ensign of

  the present tense.

  White Hill

  All winter the white hill glowed

  at the window: truth towing its

  pillar of cloud; a fortress tumbled

  into frozen bog. In January we

  followed a scuffed trail to the

  western flank, each footpad

  petalled with blood. At evening

  snow’s wavelength is amber

  sundown pinking to strawberry

  meringue. Its slopes are vellum

  to scribbling hares: flat-topped

  a long bone jutting at the shoulder

  where rushes spike each swallow

  hole. On the TV news we saw the

  country chilled to monochrome

  from satellites in space: England’s

  cur curled into its hurt. Money markets

  had failed us and politics and

  war so they were the worst of

  times: death-jingo words, distrust

  the calculus of risk. Just now, when I

  looked up from where a poem is

  uncoiling, line into line, not trusting

  itself to be left alone with the helix

  of its language and making nothing

  happen, hedges were sketched across

  fields, cattle-breath scorched cooling

  air, sheep scuffed out something

  they’d thought better of, knee

  deep in buttered snow. Now scattered

  light shows all those drafts –

  so much that is impossible to

  say: errata, dross, each aide memoir

  each billet doux, each crushed

  condolence for the coming night.

  Passed

  The dead are with us; amongst us

  I mean. You can tell them by the

  cold tips of their ears, the yellow

  flames that issue from their lips

  instead of speech, the odd way you

  still know what they mean, each one

  leading us somewhere important, to

  a crime scene or some other kind

  of slaughter - war or marriage.

  They walk slowly, stately, as if bearing

  the weight of lilies; they pass right

  through each other and don’t seem

  to care, their pockets full of bright

  untarnished change or spangles

  of frost. They spend their days lost

  somewhere we don’t know or ever

  mention; at night they throng our

  dreams under snow-tipped trees in

  empty city squares that seem Eastern

  European with stray trams brightly

  lit like a set right out of a spy film

  where others are always watching

  from high buildings in unfurnished

  rooms. They’re not unfriendly, the

  dead, in their involuntary way; they

  don’t mind much if we borrow their

  stories or memories or ignore them

  or even reach to touch. I find your

  hand to translate from sleep instead

  count your fingers like a newborn

  watch the curtains breathe, rehearse

  an introductory phrase I’m everlastingly

  too shy to speak, seeing them turn

  from me then disappear through their

  smiles like sunset through last drinks

  or rainbows oiling the river’s quay.

  Black Crow

  Black Crow you’re door-nailed now a stiff

  kaput rogered dead to rights and how!

  Arse-to-tit on the black stuff A truck or SUV

  did for you laid you low engineered your

  fall though not stiff enough to stop your mates’

  croaking call Come and play They seem to

  say it as if you could Black Crow but you’re

  all spattered shite and blood got stuffed

  in half a mo Come and pay is what they mean

  They’re dining out on you even though you’re

  too obscene to soar or preen prefer playing

  dead incognito doggo schtum Black Crow

  enough! You’re just another bum The show

  has stopped cancelled aborted like your

  plumage-sheen in speeding doors sexy self

  admiring gleam the macho stance you blagged

  the carrion you snorted took you under numb

  black rubber Nicely shagged Bon chance!

  Black Crow don’t blubber you’re a goner

  you’re lunch your life is lopped off root and

  branch and dick without prelude without

  pain so quick you couldn’t muster flight or fight

  Too little brain perhaps that’s understandable

  an easy lapse Your breath wouldn’t mist a

  looking glass for all your hard-arse hard-on

  attitude Black Crow you overtook us all and

  it’s death it’s death that won your heart that

  knocked you flat that snatched away all kerb

  side latitude that made you look so utterly

  deflated superannuated a loser a gormless

  twat Life’s like that Black Crow You know

  it’s hard to tell one chancer from the next

  What made you such a class act King of the

  Undertow? More balls? Less nowse? No tact?

  Tugging at hedgehog guts until a passing

  shadow pulled you in fast and slick stacked

  into nil’s eternal deficit where all shadows

  roost and flit Black Crow it’s murder on the

  hard shoulder and you’ve been here days ex

  airborne litter sad bum highway trash I guess

  the nights are slow lonely and long without

  traffic duty or birdsong to attract/distract you

  to get you through But we get along don’t we?

  We get along very well Every time I cycle past

  lashed in sweat I greet you with irony remorse

  regret Hail Black Crow! You beauty! You

  swell! You’re an institution a dark splash a

  lark a legend a landmark it’s a privilege to

  know No privilege can last Black Crow You’re

  sadly tattered prone in the snow-white glitter

  of a smashed screen battered in spilt oil fag

  ends hard porn hard-core tar one feather still

  frantic in the traffic stream Black Crow I know

  you the way I knew a friend who used to be a

  scream and then became a drag instead of gay

  and then was merely in my way Black Crow this

  is the end of the beginning of the road for you

  What lies beyond this boundary is tough to

  guess or even think or say Be brave Adventure

  on alone Don’t take it hard Black Cr
ow it’s

  rough luck a mantra set in stone and dropped

  into the Stygian brook Black Crow this much

  is true Carpe diem Que sera sera I’ll forget

  you I’ll seize the day alright and seize the

  night the new I’ll thumb the future’s bright lit

  passing car or magic bus and hitch right out

  of here Black Crow this is your pitch your

  requiem quietus release your own deep shit

  Death’s a bitch so just decease Black Crow

  don’t look at me that way Don’t look at me ok?

  Black Crow? Black Crow? Touché. Touché.

  Fidelity Charm

  Cradle its stasis in your hands:

  plain as a pearl, its unstrung eye

  snow-blind at the mind’s tundra.

  Smooth and cool – an egg’s

  perfection – but sterile as an ovary

  masked men have sliced away.

  Hold its dull orb between your knees

  burnish it, peer at drifted sand where

  the hours lie, and yesterdays.

  It frightens you now. So fight its slick

  of light on marbled stone, its golden

  promise snug around your finger-bone.

  French Dark

  French dark is wilted light;

  a dark where creatures crawl

  creak, click chitinous limbs.

  It’s a bat-swarm, a plague of

  blood-fat mosquitoes, a fever

  swamp. French dark is a sickly

  treacle of the air seducing

  cockroach hordes, a sticky

  trickle of rats in the eaves.

  It’s a gloomy inspissation

  at windows where jasmine

  corrupts sleep, where honey

  suckle is an impenetrable