like a fire as it sinks
and the woman crooned when she was able
across the impossible inches.
At that moment at the horizon there came a horseman
pressed to the saddle, galloping, galloping
fast as the whoop of an ambulance siren –
and just as unlikely. What happened
was slower and all of a piece.
She died. He lived (the man in the fields),
the child got by on a crust
and lived to be thirty, with sons. In the end
we came to be born too. Just.
Getting the Strap
The Our Father, the moment of fear.
He dodged round us and ran,
but was fetched back again
to stand before us on the platform.
The Our Father, the moment of fear
as the fist gripped and he hung
from the headmaster’s arm,
doubling on the spot like a rabbit
blind for home.
The Our Father, the moment of fear.
The watch he’d stolen was given
back to its owner, dumb
in the front row, watching the strapping.
The Our Father, the moment of fear.
The strap was old and black and it cracked
on belly buttock and once across his lip
because he writhed and twisted.
He would not stand and take it.
The Our Father, the moment of fear.
There was a lot of sun
leaking through churchy windows
onto a spurt of urine.
After an age of watching
we sang the last hymn.
Adders
This path is silky with dust
where a lizard balances across bracken fronds
and a brown butterfly opens wide
to the stroke of the sun,
where a trawler feels its way along the sandbanks
and two yachts, helplessly paired, tack far out
like the butterflies which have separated and gone quiet.
A wild damson tree bulges with wasps
among heaps that are not worth picking,
and there a branch splits white with the lightning
of too heavy a harvest.
The lizard is gone in a blink.
Its two-pronged tail – half withered, half growing –
flicks out of the sun.
For a moment the pulse in its throat
keeps the grass moving.
A grass-bound offering of yarrow,
rosebay willow herb and veined convolvulus
lies to one side of the path
as if someone’s coming back.
Instead, the sift of the dust –
beneath the bracken these hills are full of adders.
The conception
In the white sheets I gave you
everything I am capable of –
at the wrong time
of the month we opened
to the conception,
you were dewed like a plum
when at two A.M.
you reached under the bed
for a drink of water adrift
in yesterday’s clothes,
our sheets were a rope
caught between our thighs,
we might easily have died
but we kept on climbing.
Scan at 8 weeks
The white receiver
slides up my vagina,
I turn and you’ve come,
though I’m much too old for this
and you’re much too young.
That’s the baby
says the radiographer.
You are eight millimetres long
and pulsing,
bright in the centre of my much-used womb
which to my astonishment
still looks immaculate.
You are all heart,
I watch you tick and tick
and wonder
what you will come to,
will this be our only encounter
in the white gallery of ultrasound
or are you staying?
One day will we talk about this
moment when I first saw your spaceship
far off, heading for home?
Pedalo
She swam to me smiling, her teeth
pointed by salt water, her mouth
a rock-pool’s spat-out wine gum,
and then the tide flung
over her threshold,
and her lips moved.
The valve of her mouth was plumed
with salt-sweet tendrils,
sea danced from her pelt
of oil and muscle,
she rested her elbows on my pedalo
and there she hung
browning the pads of her shoulders
like a snake in the sun.
On shore thunderhead pines
drifted and swelled
like August umbrellas
stunning the fronts of hotels.
The sharp tide rinsed
over her threshold
as she dived once
and an angler cast
with lightning-proof rod
from the crinkled rocks.
A slow Medusa tilted beneath her,
shadowing toes and ankles
then on with its belly to the south,
braille on its tentacles.
She could read it like a newspaper
as it hunted alongside her.
I shivered
at the roll of her syllables,
and her joined feet winnowing,
and so I trawled her with me
over a shallow forest of dog-jawed
fruit sucking the trees,
past angler-fish socketing sand
with stone-cold faces,
through shrimps which divided between them
her armpit crevices
then flicked that way and this
tasting the dew of her breasts.
I trawled her past innocent sand
and the spumy outstretched arms
of agar and tangle –
but no, I wouldn’t look down
however she called to me
until my fingers were shrunk
like old laundry.
I did not dare look down
to be snagged by ruby and seal-black
trees relaxing their weave.
On shore nobody’s waiting.
The children, firm and delicious
as morning goods, have sheathed up their spades.
The boy with burned legs
has stepped out of his pantaloons
and skips in his blue vest
on the verandah boards.
The big one lights a mosquito candle,
Dad fills his glass of wine
four times, while they count,
and crickets saw in the ditch, frantic
along with the old car number-plate
and the boys’ jar of fishing maggots.
They are screeching, all of them:
night, night, night’s come
and no one’s ever had a pedalo out this long.
Night-wind sifts on the shore
where striped recliners and wind-breaks
squeak by the green pavilion
crying for more.
I’ve lost my wife to the sea
Dad thinks hazily,
and takes another bottle of Muscadet
out of the gas cooler,
he imagines her dreaming
and sleeping miles from him,
each breath takes her farther,
toes in the air,
sea claps under her pedalo
impudently happy –
Below me now a mirror of wave-ruts
in firm brown sand,
I’d pulled her with me for miles
and there was nowhere to hide.
No
w let me see you swim back
I said. She was mouthing
like mackerel tossed in a bucket
when the man’s too busy to kill it,
with her scale-lapped bathing-hat
fly-blown and crazing.
She had nothing on underneath.
She was bare and bald as an eel.
Now she was an old bathing-woman
a mackintoshed marine Venus,
now she was that girl with lipstick
a push-up bra and a beehive,
now she was a slippery customer at Cannes
bare-breasted and young,
now she was my old
familiar snake again.
I took her curls in my hands and I pulled
but they were limpetted, smiling,
and there were just the two of us rocking.
We were close as spies
and she stayed silent
till day dived after its horizon
and the sea rustled with moonlight.
Swell shuts and opens
like a throat,
she claps
under my pedalo
impudently happy.
Where are you now
my sister, my spouse?
Clap with one hand
or clap to nothing –
I know you can.
Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth
my sister, my spouse.
The pedalo rocks
and is still again.
Beetroot Soup
Its big red body ungulps
from the bowl in the fridge
with a fat shiver.
Glazed
with yellow beading of grease
the soup melts from the edge,
yesterday’s beetroot
turns the texture of tongues
rolling their perfect ovals
out of the silt at the bottom.
Like duck breast-feathers, the dumplings
wisp to the surface, curl
as the soup brightens
just off the boil.
There’ll be pearl onions
– two to a mouthful –
white butter,
then later
plums
piled in a bucket
under the table
thatched with dull leaves
and a black
webbing of twig
over their round
sleep.
When the soup’s done
yellow
constellations
burst on its skin,
bread goes to work
wiping and sopping
the star-scum
set in a slick
on the base of the pot –
chicken fat.
The Diving Reflex
Where the great ship sank I am,
where cathedrals of ice breathe through me
down naves of cold
I tread and roll,
where the light goes
and the pressure weighs
in the rotten caves of an iceberg’s side
I glide,
I am mute, not breathing,
my shoulders hunched to the stream
with the whales, drowsing.
Bells rang in my blood
as I went down
purling, heart over heel
through the nonchalant
fish-clad ocean –
her inquisitive kiss
slowed me to this
great cartwheel.
Down I go, tied to my rope.
I have my diving reflex to sister me,
and the blubbery sea cow
nods, knowing me.
There is blood in my veins
too thick for panic,
there is a down
so deep a whale
thins to a sheet of paper
and here I hang.
I will not drown.
The diving reflex can enable the human body to shut down and maintain life for as long as forty minutes underwater at low temperatures.
Bathing at Balnacarry
Two miles or so beyond
the grey flank of the farm
and the wall of gravestones
the oncoming rain
put an edge on the mountains,
they were blue and sure
as the blade of a pocket knife
whizzed to a razor traverse
cutting the first
joint of my thumb –
It was stitched, not bleeding,
the dark threads in the sea were weeds
and my son was packing them
between the stones of his dam.
He was holding back the river
while the mountain punctured clouds
to hold back rain
no farther off than we’d cycled
bumping towards our swim.
In the grey purse of Balnacarry
there were red pebbles and smooth pebbles
and the close grain of the water,
the men were absent –
one walking in the woods
one fishing off the rocks –
the child behind me built up his dam
through which the downpour would blossom
in the sea at Balnacarry –
it was cold, but not lonely
as I stripped and swam.
Boys on the Top Board
Boys on the top board
too high to catch.
Noon is painting them out.
Where the willow swans
on the quarry edge
they tan and sweat
in the place of divers
with covered nipples –
Olympians,
that was the way of it.
Boys in the breeze
on the top board
where the willow burns
golden and green
on feet grappling –
boys fooling
shoulder to shoulder,
light shaking.
The lake’s in shadow,
the day’s cooling,
time to come down –
they stub their heels on the sun
then pike-dive
out of its palm.
Sylvette Scrubbing
Sylvette scrubbing,
arms of a woman
marbled with muscle
swabbing the sill,
tiny red grains
like suck kisses
on Sylvette’s skin,
Sylvette’s wrists
in and out of the water
as often as otters.
She grips that pig of a brush
squirts bristle
makes the soap crawl then
wipes it all up.
Babes in the Wood
Father,
I remember when you left us.
I knew all along
it was going to happen.
You gave me bread but wouldn’t look at me
and Hansel couldn’t believe it
because you were his hero,
but I loved you and knew
when you stroked my hair you were bound to leave us.
It was Hansel who crumbled the bread
while I skipped at your side and pretended
to prattle questions and guess nothing.
Father,
did you drive home quickly or slowly,
thinking of your second family
waiting to grab your legs with shrieks of ‘Daddy!’
and of your new wife’s face, smoothing
now she sees you’re alone?
Father,
we love it here in the forest.
Hansel’s got over it. I’ve learned to fish
and shoot rabbits with home-made arrows.
We’ve even built ourselves a house
where the wolves can’t get us.
But wolves don’t frighten us much
even when they
howl in the dark.
With wolves, you know where you are.
Cajun
This is what I want –
to be back again
with the night to come –
slipper-bags across our saddles
how fast we rode
and all for nothing.
Your lips on his lips
your hand in his hand
as you went from the dance.
We heard Mass at dawn,
When I knelt for communion
it was the hem of your white dress
I felt in my mouth,
it was your lips moving.
This is all I want
to be there again
with the night to come –
meet me where the fire
lights the bayou
watch my sweat shine
as I play for you.
It is for you I play
my voice leaping the flames,
if you don’t come
Counting Backwards Page 17