Poems

FROM CIRCUS-APPRENTICE

FROM THE SAHEL (for Aicha Ouedraogo, Nadraogo)

Aicha, you give us no survival-heroics, no doom-histories, as your face, sculpture-solid reaches out from a front-page spread – you in floral cottons, wide-eyed, poised beside the thick-leaved neem you have nurtured from a seedling – carrying water to it weekly, gliding sure-footed towards it like an Angel of the Desert, your face shining under a glass-blue sky. But you have managed to astound the stars: resolutely starting over as your lifeline for food, fuel building materials and health cures became waste – your homelands stripped. You planted fifteen trees here in Nadraogo, with just the Sahara’s dry promises in your eye. How do you name your miracles? Of the fifteen, five survived, including your neem now growing beanstalk-fast in desert, already over twice your height and reaching into a tongue-dry, drought-filled sky; twice knocked flat by straying cattle, twice mended by you, fastening it to a wooden splint with strips of bark. Aicha, I know little about you, your days in Nadraogo, your work in the village reforestation commune. . . How have you rattled the sky, perfected the art of loving trees? Your fable of neem stalks our century and more. (After an article by Michael McCarthy, A Tree for Christmas, The Independent, 23rd December, 2002) (Published in Mslexia, 2003)

CIRCUS-APPRENTICE

I’m learning it all – acrobatics, clowning, riding bareback and trapeze, fire from a sleeve: my hand’s a wand. I weave my life round dancing elephants who spray the air while turning their backs on the crowd; lions who never put a foot wrong. I’m taking their cue, I’ve seen what people want. Prancing ponies teach me steps: pacing, adroitness, like my fellow-dancers keeping their spot. I’m walking the high-wire, making my mark poised, balanced, don't look away – you are my gravity's other edge. (Published in The Wolf, 2004)

KEEPER

You want me to be a lighthouse-keeper? Fine. I’ll set myself up in a spiralled house with only books and the cat for company. I’ll learn how the sea looks turned inside out, how bird cries are thin winding scarves escaping. I’ll handle looking myself in the eye when I peer down the telescope, meet silences ragged as runaway clouds. No one will know how I value the way the ships’ lights radiate, how I long for their visits. I’ll stay my ground, teach people to keep their distance, maybe get to love this sea-life drop my anchor, forget the city, its solidity, after the ribbed slip and slap of sea. (Published in Acumen, 2005)

THE LIFEBOAT-SHED (RNLI, Aldeburgh)

It’s that time, mid-autumn: an oil-base blue sky - pebbles, rocks, a foothold for seagulls. Clouds buckle, scoop grey on grey, mirror the colours of the stones. Now, rose-tinged the clouds fire up – a final show before darkening. The boat shed stirs, tugs on its moorings, flags down the breeze as rows of street-lights flick on. People shuffle by, shaped by anoraks, adrift from the pack. They peer through the windows of the lifeguards’ shop, lined into the oldest dream, of being saved no matter what sea.

HYBRID

I have swallowed a country, it sits quietly inside me. Days go by when I scarcely realise it is there. . . ........ I talk to this country, tell it, You’re not forgotten, nor ever could be. I depend on you – cornucopia packed close with daylight moons and bony coasts, the dust of eucalyptus on my teeth; mudded rivers burnished smooth under the cobalt crystal of a lucent sky. It is my reference-point for other landscapes that, after thirty years, have multiplied my skies. (Published in Agenda, Australian issue, 2005)

CLOUD-EYE (i.m. C.G. d. 19.9.87)

The sting in a limbering spring day foreshadows summer. Through her window roses plait themselves together beside young- leafed eucalypts as she, too ill to speak, slowly becomes my eye in the clouds, the gap I will see through. No one knows me better than she who circled my first flight. I’ve tried to prepare myself, remembering her cyclopaedic mind, her gift for solutions. My bird-mother. I reach out, hold her hands. She slides down into sleep and wakes again on this final island, where touch is more important than words. She grimaces, begs for morphine . . . Our world divides. We’ll fly differently now. (Published in The Review, Weekend Australian, 2006)

From After Kandinsky (Vagabond Press, Sydney, 2005)

GWEN JOHN SWIMS THE CHANNEL

September 3, 1939. Early evening and the sea soughs, sways - a sketchbook washing calm, its ribs carrying the meticulous rainy births - portraits from her many lives. She has always loved the coastline, come back to it, the waves' fringed-grip - daily swimming the Channel - testing herself against its heave and push. Ahead, Dover's scribbly-white cliffs, and beyond, the hills of Tenby - its beach's curve, her childhood's patch of sand. She has tested this sea's glass and painted herself into its mirror like a cloud passing over. She has more interiors to match and place, place and match as again she gives herself to the water - its moody mountains surging, pacing her - the archetypal swimmer planing darkness, with the coast clearing and Paris-Meudon behind her. (Published in Mslexia, No.8, Winter/Spring, 2001)

AT DELPHI

Clouded Yellows, Red Admirals, others I cannot name weaving in and out of bindweed, daisies, buttercups. They've flown over wide sea-stretches to reach these wild grasses, tombs and ruins. I breathe the scented air, feel the sky's silk, there for the taking. I can almost unknot my unhappiness - see how its underside is the impossible love I've carried all this way like spare, necessary baggage. Can I ungrip it, leave it here for random gods to give one last blessing? I hear your voice urging me on to walk through this steady fire of butterflies. (Published in Acumen 47, September, 2003)

FROM TIGERS ON THE SILK ROAD (Arc Publications, 2000)

POINSETTIAS

(Extract)

(for M.)

I Daily she chides her mirror: who is this woman staring back turning the glass around, twisting its magnifier seeing a lifetime's portraits paraded like miniatures - herself at fifteen in the school- concert, on her wedding-day, in the Alexandra Chorus, at her son's graduation? She gathers in her few strands under the blonde-curled wig Studies her pinched skin, wanting a sign, a rouge in her cheeks an opposite of surrender. The love of red will save her. ***** Solo lamps articulate each starred bush. Leaves become flowers, flowers become leaves, fine red stems shedding fire, sunrise-bright. She sees herself walking through their thick wall, a cascade of scarlet at the hospital entrance. Daily the tread through white-lined leaves, the bloodless veined maps, red-topped - their blazes reminders. When she grows tired, it is right to look away, forget the furrowed richness. Three months have scarred me. . . She studies photographs from last Christmas: she and her sons among the prized dye-bright coal-flowers that will not be extinguished, will fall off the stem and fold in at their own pace. ***** Her visitors trailed messages of fire. She touched the poinsettias - velvet-strong petals, easily bruised. If only some of their fire could stay for her, help her sleep. One operation after another. She followed her charts; read 'Terminal' (the doctors' notes carelessly left on her bed) as if she were strong enough to know the worst - the tumour's shifts and moods, as though her body had stopped in its tracks, to remind her of the recklessness of cells speeding up. The word 'Terminal' hammered her. If only she hadn't read it. . ***** The poinsettias stopped flowering, their fire finally dissolved in air. She cut the stems back to half their length, fed them every fortnight when the new growth began. Without their red, the painted leaves, she felt displaced, settled into a green of hesitations, willing herself to obey the plants: Don't overfeed, use tepid water. . . She would carry them or leave a message for her sons to bring them from the cellar next Christmas, nearly a year away now.

1942

They'd hoped he'd be back for Christmas - the lights shining down on him, the tree somehow shielding off the horror. A break. The family hadn't seen him as a soldier, in his uniform, among harvested paddocks, the dried stubble that pricked your legs. Arriving home, he said Merry Christmas, hugged people and slapped them on the back. Wandered about the place, eyes crinkled with strain, lines dug into his forehead. So young, he seemed to be either laughing or very sad as though, in between, there was nothing.

DANCING

Nothing has dulled my feel for earth, its stern gravity-pull, its cushion of dark. Neighbours in the flat below hear my feet tapping while the rest of the house sleeps. When I dance in daylight, boards creak to samba, tango, waltz. I have acres and acres to dance through, recharging as I go. Sometimes I find a partner in a shopping-mall or an uncut field, my party-face sparking till I'm giddy. I whirl through tiredness changing the beat, everything spinning - I'm flying at last. My eyes glisten, past bitterness - I dance in my sleep. Whole streets fly by me, whole streets have started dancing.

SLIPPAGE

I They have found an answer, those people talking to their plants. Tongues rising, breath following breath. Through a carbon dioxide veil plants take in exhalations. II In new council-flat blocks the windows are uniformly small, rationing the view. It was never like this on the mountain. Years of looking at guidebooks, wanting to camp in the hills. III There was no deluge, only equators that saw the rivers spill over. The sky might boil, we would cover our heads, remembering love, where we had delayed it - this fate of avoidance. We wear our hearts on old sleeves, tamed by the usual risks. There is still the wash of sun. Another day, the drying summer.

POEM FOR A SHALLOT

I am fooled. You insist on the secret of skins - how perfectly each wraps you. You compartmentalize, I don't know how. I can peel you back to nothing. I hunt for what isn't there - layer upon layer - down to your cagey heart. When I try to get away you've snuck into my breath, eyes, making me cry into my hands.

KNEBWORTH PARK

A cave of air softens, hovers over our heads. We've waited all year for this: the March lull, the park almost tourist-free. Put your ear to this unsaddled soil, sound out the mating-calls of otters, rabbits, voles; hear horses' hoofbeats pound nearer-far. I have made an altar of calm among these ageing oaks, lines of stiff-backed trees. Our walk circles the ancient house, grounds set off by daffodils. A five-year-old sings a nursery rhyme, wanting to pat sheep. Their beady eyes distract, promising only puzzles. We call ourselves comfortable explorers, notice a wine-glass left among the ferns. A squirrel skids into wintry hiding. As the light fades, we study each other's faces for signs of sun.