And you will always mourn him.
You will write a poem.
You will count him into your dreams.
The other side of the sky’s dark room
On the other side of the sky’s dark room
a monstrous finger
of lightning plays war.
As clay quivers
beaded with moisture
where the spade slices it
the night quivers.
Late, towards midnight, a door slams
on the other side of the sky’s dark room.
The spade stretchers
raw earth, helpless to ease
the dark, inward explosion.
Convolvulus
I love these flowers that lie in the dust.
We think the world is what we wish it is,
we think that where we say flowers, there will be flowers,
where we say bombs, there will be nothing
until we turn to reconstruction.
But here on the ground, in the dust
is the striped, lilac convolvulus.
Believe me, how fragrant it is,
the flower of coming up from the beach.
There in the dust the convolvulus squeezes itself shut.
You go by, you see nothing, you are tired
from that last swim too late in the evening.
Where we say bombs, there will be bombs.
The only decision is where to plant them –
these flowers that grow at the whim of our fingers –
but not the roving thread of the convolvulus,
spun from a source we cannot trace.
Below, at the foot of the cliff
the sea laps up the apron of sand
which was our day’s home. Where we said land
water has come, where we said flower
and snapped our fingers, there came nothing.
I love these flowers that lie in the dust
barefaced at noon, candid convolvulus
lilac and striped and flattened underfoot.
Crushed, they breathe out their honey, and slowly
come back to themselves in the balm of the night.
But a lumber of engines grows in the seaward sky –
how huge the engines, huge the shadow of planes.
The grey lilo
The grey lilo with scarlet and violet
paintballed into its hollows, on which
my daughter floats, from which her delicate wrist
angles, while her hand sculls the water,
the grey lilo where my daughter floats,
her wet hair smooth to her skull,
her eyes closed, their dark lashes
protecting her from the sky’s envy
of their sudden, staggering blue,
the grey lilo, misted with condensation,
idly shadows the floor of the pool
as if it had a journey to go on –
but no, it is only catching the echo
of scarlet and violet geraniums,
and my daughter is only singing
under her breath, and the time that settles
like yellow butterflies, is only
just about to move on –
Yellow butterflies
They are the sun’s fingerprints on grey pebbles
two yards from the water,
dabbed on the eucalyptus, the olive,
the cracked pot of marigolds,
and now they pulse again, sucking
dry the wild thyme,
or on a sightless bird, not yet buried
they feast a while.
If they have a name, these yellow butterflies,
they do not want it; they know what they are,
quivering, sated, and now once more
printing sun, sun, and again sun
in the olive hollows.
Plume
If you were to reach up your hand,
if you were to push apart the leaves
turning aside your face like one who looks
not at the sun but where the sun hides –
there, where the spider scuttles
and the lizard whips out of sight –
if you were to search
with your small, brown, inexperienced hands
among the leaves that shield the fire of the fruit
in a vault of shadow, if you were to do it
you’d be allowed, for this is your planet
and you are new on it,
if you were to reach inside the leaves
and cup your hands as the fruit descends
like a balloon on the fields of evening
huffing its orange plume
one last time, as the flight ends
and the fruit stops growing –
Odysseus
For those who do not write poems
but have the cause of poems in them:
this thief, sly as Odysseus
who puts out from Albanian waters
into the grape-dark Ionian dawn,
his dirty engine coughing out puffs of black,
to maraud, as his ancestors taught him,
the soft villas of the south –
The blue garden
‘Doesn’t it look peaceful?’ someone said
as our train halted on the embankment
and there was nothing to do but stare
at the blue garden.
Blue roses slowly opened,
blue apples glistened
beneath the spreading peacock of leaves.
The fountain spat jets of pure Prussian
the decking was made with fingers of midnight
the grass was as blue as Kentucky.
Even the children playing
in their ultramarine paddling-pool
were touched by a cobalt Midas
who had changed their skin
from the warm colours of earth
to the azure of heaven.
‘Don’t they look happy?’ someone said,
as the train manager apologised
for the inconvenience caused to our journey,
and yes, they looked happy.
Didn’t we wish we were in the blue garden
soaked in the spray of the hose-snake,
didn’t we wish we could dig in the indigo earth
for sky-coloured potatoes,
didn’t we wish our journey was over
and we were free to race down the embankment
and be caught up in the blue, like those children
who shrank to dots of cerulean
as our train got going.
Violets
Sometimes, but rarely, the ancestors
who set my bones, and that kink
where my parting won’t stay straight – strangers
whose blood beats like mine –
call out for flowers
after the work of a lifetime.
Many lifetimes, and I don’t know them –
the pubs they kept, the market stalls they abandoned,
the cattle driven and service taken,
the mines and rumours and disappearances
of men gone looking for work.
If they left papers, these have dissolved.
Maybe on census nights they were walking
from town to town, on their way elsewhere.
Where they left their bones, who knows.
I can call them up, but they won’t answer.
They want the touch of other hands, that rubbed
their quick harsh lives to brightness.
They have no interest in being ancestors.
They have given enough.
But this I know about: a bunch of violets
laid on a grave, and a woman walking,
and black rain falling on the headstone
of ‘the handsomest man I’ve ever seen’.
The rowan
(in memory of Michael Donaghy)
The rowan,
weary of blossoming
is thick with berries now, in bronze September
where the sky has been left to harden,
hammered, ground down
to fine metal, blue-tanned.
In the nakedness beneath the rowan
grow pale cyclamen
and autumn crocus, bare-stemmed.
Beaten, fragile, the flowers still come
eager for blossoming.
Weary of blossoming, the rowan
holds its blood-red tattoo of berries.
No evil can cross this threshold.
The rowan, the lovely rowan
will bring protection.
Barnoon
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 m
idnight
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
Counting Backwards Page 9