MacNeice, freckled with brown
From many damps in many different houses.
On the inner page, under my father’s autograph
An early flourish of blue crayon
Where I scribbled a figure so primitive
There are not even legs for it to walk upon.
Bowed, chipped, darkening, edge-worn
Sunned, loose, fading
Binding copy, reading copy, shaken:
Ten books that I have taken.
From the balcony on an August morning
I see the rest fly to the tip lorry
Where the sofa for a moment reposes
Legs in the air, grinning.
It is soaked through with music
But nothing will save it.
Behind it the sea makes the usual silveriness,
The café opens and the bikes whizz
From end to end of the promenade.
Meanwhile in my father’s hand, a quotation
On the title page of Herbert Read’s
Thirty-Five Poems: ‘I absorbed Blake,
His strange beauty, his profound message,
His miraculous technique, and to emulate
Blake was to be my ambition
And my despair…’ (Faber and Faber,
24 Russell Square.) I see my own hands
Smooth and small as they are not now
Lifting, turning, ‘I am amazed
To find how much I owe to him.’
Subtraction
You always thought that you’d die mid-stride,
Sun on your left hand, darkness
Crossing you out in one swipe.
When you got on to subtraction
It was easy-peasy. Add one
At the top, take one from the next column.
Good at take-away, good at adding,
Revving up for the 11-plus
But no mathematician,
You stumbled upon infinity
With infinite terror, and knew
What you’d been told was wrong.
If all you loved had been given
Then all could be taken.
You knew then that you must blot
In the blue notebook, trim
With happy pencil, the sum
Of what is when it is not.
My people
My people are the dying,
I am of their company
And they are mine,
We wake in the wan hour
Between three and four,
Listen to the rain
And consider our painkillers.
I lie here in the warm
With four pillows, a light
And the comfort of my phone
On which I sometimes compose,
And the words come easily
Bubbling like notes
From a bird that thinks it is dawn.
My people are the dying.
I reach out to them,
A company of suffering.
One falls by the roadside
And a boot stamps on him,
One lies in her cell, alone,
Without tenderness
Brutally handled
Towards her execution.
I can do nothing.
This is my vigil: the lit candle,
The pain, the breath of my people
Drawn in pain.
September Rain
Always rain, September rain,
The slipstream of the season,
Night of the equinox, the change.
There are three surfers out back.
Now the rain’s pulse is doubled, the wave
Do they know where the coast is combed with light
Or is there only the swell, lifting
Back to the beginning
When they ran down the hill like children
Through this rain, September rain,
And the sea opened its breast to them?
I lie and listen
And the life in me stirs like a tide
That knows when it must be gone.
I am on the deep deep water
Lightly held by one ankle
Out of my depth, waiting.
Hold out your arms
Death, hold out your arms for me
Embrace me
Give me your motherly caress,
Through all this suffering
You have not forgotten me.
You are the bearded iris that bakes its rhizomes
Beside the wall,
Your scent flushes with loveliness,
Sherbet, pure iris
Lovely and intricate.
Death, you heap into my arms
A basket of unripe damsons
Red crisscross straps that button behind me.
I don’t know about school,
My knowledge is for papery bud covers
Tall stems and brown
Bees touching here and there, delicately
Before a swerve to the sun.
Death stoops over me
Her long skirts slide,
She knows I am shy.
Even the puffed sleeves on my white blouse
Embarrass me,
She will pick me up and hold me
So no one can see me,
I will scrub my hair into hers.
There, the iris increases
Note by note
Death, there’s no need to ask:
A mother will always lift a child
As a rhizome
Must lift up a flower
So you settle me
My arms twining,
Thighs gripping your hips
Where the swell of you is.
As you push back my hair
– Which could do with a comb
But never mind –
You murmur
‘We’re nearly there.’
(25 May 2017)
About the Author
Helen Dunmore (1952–2017) was a poet, novelist, short story and children’s writer. Her poetry books have been given the Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendations, Cardiff International Poetry Prize, Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and Signal Poetry Award, and Bestiary was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her poem ‘The Malarkey’ won the 2010 National Poetry Competition.
After making her debut with The Apple Fall in 1983, Helen Dunmore published all her poetry with Bloodaxe Books. Her earlier work is available in Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), which was followed by Glad of These Times (2007), The Malarkey (2012), and Inside the Wave (2017), her tenth and last collection.
She published twelve novels and three books of short stories with Penguin, including A Spell of Winter (1995), winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, Talking to the Dead (1996), The Siege (2001), Mourning Ruby (2003), House of Orphans (2006) and The Betrayal (2010), as well as The Greatcoat (2012) with Hammer, and The Lie (2014), Exposure (2016) and Birdcage Walk (2017) with Hutchinson.
Copyright
Copyright © Helen Dunmore 2017
First published 2017 by
Bloodaxe Books Ltd,
Eastburn,
South Park,
Hexham,
Northumberland NE46 1BS.
This ebook first published in 2017.
www.bloodaxebooks.com
For further information about Bloodaxe titles
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Cover design: Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce.
The right of Helen Dunmore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifica
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ISBN: 978 1 78037 359 1 ebook