I wandered and could not find you
in your winter garden
I picked icicles,
my fingers burned on your gate
of freezing iron
I have the pain
of it yet on my palm,
through clanging branches
and black frost-fall
I dared not call
so I slide above worlds of ice
where the fishes kiss
and the drowned farmer
whips on his cart
through bubbles of glass
and his dogs prance
at the tail-end, frozen
with one leg cocked
and their yellow urine
twined in thickets of ice.
I stamp my boot
and the ice booms.
I have looked so long
I am wild and white
as your creatures, I might
be one of your own.
The cuckoo game
It starts with breaking into the wood
through a wave of chestnut leaves.
I am grey as a spring morning
fat and fuzzy as pussy willow,
all around I feel them simmering
those nests I’ve laid in,
like burst buds, a hurt place
lined for the young who’ve gone
unfledged to the ground.
There they splay, half-eaten
and their parents see nothing
but the one that stays.
This is the weather that cuckoos love:
the breaking of buds,
I am grey in the woods, burgling
the body-heat of birds,
riding the surf of chestnut flowers
on spread feathers.
I love the kiss of a carefully-built nest
in my second of pausing –
this is the way we grow
we cuckoos,
if you think cuckoos never come back
we do. We do.
The butcher’s daughter
Where have you been, my little daughter
out in the wild weather?
I have met with a sailor, mother,
he has given me five clubs for juggling
and says I must go with him for ever.
Oh no, my treasure
you must come in and stay for ever
for you are the butcher’s daughter.
Where have you been, my little daughter
in the winter weather?
I have met a man of war, mother,
he has given me four hoops to dance through
and he says I must love him for ever.
Oh no, my treasure
you must come in and shut the door
for you are the butcher’s daughter.
Where have you been, my little daughter,
out in stormy weather?
I have met with a prince, mother,
he has given me three promises
and I must rule his heart for ever.
Oh no, my treasure
you must give back his promises
for you are the butcher’s daughter.
Where have you been, my little daughter
in the wild of the weather?
I have spoken to a wise man, mother,
who gave me knowledge of good and evil
and said I must learn from him for ever.
Oh no, my treasure
you have no need of his knowledge
for you are the butcher’s daughter.
Where have you been, my little, daughter
out in the summer weather?
I have met with a butcher, mother,
and he is sharpening a knife for me
for I am the butcher’s daughter.
The greenfield ghost
The greenfield ghost is not much of a ghost,
it is a ghost of dammed-up streams,
it is a ghost of slow walks home
and sunburn and blackberry stains.
It is the ghost of low-grade land,
it is the ghost of lovers holding hands
on evening strolls out of town.
The greenfield ghost is not much of a ghost.
It is the ghost of mothers at dusk calling,
it is the ghost of children leaving their dens
for safe houses which will cover them.
Herring girl
See this ’un here, this little bone needle,
he belonged to the net menders.
I heard the crackle in your throat
like fishbone caught there, not words.
And this other ’un, he’s wood, look,
you said to the radio interviewer
and I couldn’t see the fine-fashioned needle
or the seams on your face,
but I heard the enormous hiss of herring
when they let the tailboard down
and the buyers bargaining
as the tide reached their boots,
I heard the heave of the cart, the herring girls’
laugh as they flashed their knives –
Such lovely voices we all had
you ought t’ have heard us
singing like Gracie Fields
or else out of the hymn book.
Up to your elbows, you gutted
your pile of herring. The sludge
was silver, got everywhere.
Your hands were fiery and blooded.
from the slash and the tweak and the salt
and the heap of innards for the gulls.
I’d put a little bit o’ bandage round these fingers
– you can see where they been nicked,
we had to keep going so quick
we could never wear gloves.
Russian doll
When I held you up to my cheek you were cold
when I came close to your smile it dissolved,
the paint on your lips was as deep
as the steaming ruby of beetroot soup
but your breath smelled of varnish and pine
and your eyes swivelled away from mine.
When I wanted to open you up
you glowed, dumpy and perfect
smoothing your dozen little selves
like rolls of fat under your apron
and I hadn’t the heart to look at them.
I knew I would be spoiling something.
But when I listened to your heart
I heard the worlds inside of you spinning
like the earth on its axis spinning.
Breeze of ghosts
Tall ship hanging out at the horizon
tall ship blistering the horizon
you’ve been there so long
your sheets and decks white
in the sun
what wind whispers you in?
Tall ship creaking at the horizon
your captain long gone
your crew in the cabin
drinking white rum
their breath spiralling
what wind breathes you in?
Tall ship tilting to the shoreline
past Spanish palms
tall ship coming in like a swan
in the midday sun
what wind blows you in?
It is the cool
wind of the morning
stirring my masts
before the sun
burns it to nothing,
they call it
breeze of ghosts.
FROM
Short Days, Long Nights
(1991)
For my family
Those shady girls
Those shady girls on the green side of the street,
those far-from-green girls who keep to the shade,
those shady girls in mysterious suits
with their labels half-showing
as the cream flap of the jacket swings open,
those girls kicking as
ide the front-panelled pleats
of their cream suits with cerise lapels,
those on-coming girls,
those girls swinging pearly umbrellas
as tightly-sheathed as tulips in bud
those girls in cream and cerise suits
which mark if you touch them,
those girls with their one-name appointments
who walk out of the sunshine.
The dream-life of priests
Do they wake careless and warm
with light on the unwashed windows
and a perpetual smell of bacon,
do their hearts sink at today’s martyr
with his unpronounceable name
and strange manner of execution?
Do they wake out of the darkness
with hearts thudding like ours
and reach for the souvenir lamp-switch
then shove a chair against the door
and key facts into the desk-top computer
while cold rattles along the corridor?
Do they cry out in sleep
at some barely-crushed thought,
some failure to see the joke,
or do they rest in their dreams
along the surface of the water
like a bevy of dragonflies
slack and blue in the shallows
whirring among reed-mace and water-forget-me-not
while the ripples cluck?
Do they wake in ordinary time
to green curtains slapping the frame
of a day that’ll cloud later on,
to cars nudging and growling for space,
to a baptismal mother, wan with her eagerness
and her sleepless, milk-sodden nights?
Do they reach and stroke the uneven plaster
and sniff the lime-blossom threading
like silk through the room,
or do they wait, stretched out like babies
in the gold of its being too early
with sun on their ceilings wobbling like jelly
while their housekeepers jingle the milk-bottles
and cry ‘Father!’ in sixty-year-old voices
and scorch toast with devotion –
do they sense the milk in the pan rising
then dive with their blue chins, blundering
through prayer under their honeycomb blankets?
Sisters leaving before the dance
Sisters leaving before the dance,
before the caller gets drunk
or the yellow streamers unreel
looping like ribbons
here and there on the hair of the dancers,
sisters at the turn of the stairs
as the sound system
one-twos, as the squeezebox
mewed in its case
is slapped into breath, and that scrape
of the tables shoved back for the dance
burns like the strike of a match
in the cup of two hands.
Ripe melons and meat
mix in the binbags with cake
puddled in cherry-slime, wind
heavy with tar
blows back the yard door, and I’m
caught with three drinks in my hands
on the stairs looking up
at the sisters leaving before the dance,
not wishing to push past them
in their white broderie anglaise and hemmed
skirts civilly drawn
to their sides to make room
for the big men in suits,
and the girls in cerise
dance-slippers and cross-backed dresses
who lead the way up
and take charge of the tickets, and yet
from their lips cantaloupe
fans as they speak
in bright quick murmurs between
a violin ghosting a tune
and the kids in the bar downstairs
begging for Coke, peaky but certain.
The sisters say their good nights
and all the while people stay bunched
on the stairs going up, showing respect
for the small words of the ones leaving,
the ones who don’t stay for the dancing.
One sister twists a white candle
waxed in a nest of hydrangeas –
brick-red and uncommon, flowers
she really can’t want – she bruises the limp
warm petals with crisp fingers
and then poises her sandal
over the next non-slip stair
so the dance streams at her heels
in the light of a half-shut door.
On not writing certain poems
You put your hand over mine and whispered
‘There he is, laying against the pebbles’ –
you wouldn’t point for the shadow
stirring the trout off his bed
where he sculled the down-running water,
and the fish lay there, unbruised
by the soft knuckling of the river-bed
or your stare which had found him out.
Last night I seemed to be walking
with something in my hand, earthward, down-
dropping as lead, unburnished –
a plate perhaps or a salver
with nothing on it or offered
but its own shineless composure.
I have it here on my palm, the weight
settled, spreading through bone
until my wrist tips backward, pulled down
as if my arm was laid in a current
of eel-dark water – that thrum
binding the fingers – arrow-like –
Privacy of rain
Rain. A plump splash
on tense, bare skin.
Rain. All the May leaves
run upward, shaking.
Rain. A first touch
at the nape of the neck.
Sharp drops kick the dust, white
downpours shudder
like curtains, rinsing
tight hairdos to innocence.
I love the privacy of rain,
the way it makes things happen
on verandahs, under canopies
or in the shelter of trees
as a door slams and a girl runs out
into the black-wet leaves.
By the brick wall an iris
sucks up the rain
like intricate food, its tongue
sherbetty, furred.
Rain. All the May leaves
run upward, shaking.
On the street bud-silt
covers the windscreens.
Dancing man
That lake lies along the shore
like a finger down my cheek,
its waters lull and collapse
dark as pomegranates,
the baby crawls on the straw
in the shadow-map of his father’s chair
while the priest talks things over
and light dodges across his hair.
There’s a lamp lit in the shed
and a fire on, and a man drinking
spiritus fortis he’s made for himself.
But on the floor of the barn
the dancing man is beginning to dance.
First a beat from the arch of his foot
as he stands upright, a neat
understatement of all that’s in him
and he lowers his eyes to her
as if it’s nothing, nothing –
but she has always wanted him.
Her baby crawls out from the chairs
and rolls in his striped vest laughing
under the feet of the dancers
so she must dance over him
toe to his cheek, heel to his hair,
as she melts to the man dancing.
They are talking and talking over there –
the priest sits wi
th his back to her
for there’s no malice in him
and her husband glistens like the sun
through the cypress-flame of the man dancing
In the shed a blackbird
has left three eggs which might be kumquats –
they are so warm. One of them’s stirring –
who said she had deserted them?
In the orchard by the barn
there are three girls wading,
glossy, laughing at something,
they spin a bucket between them,
glowing, they are forgotten –
something else is about to happen.
At Cabourg II
The bathers, where are they? The sea is quite empty,