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.
The greenfield ghost is not much of a ghost.
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
THE APPLE FALL
(1983)
The marshalling yard
In the goods yard the tracks are unmarked.
Snow lies, the sky is full of it.
Its hush swells in the dark.
Grasped by black ice on black
a massive noise of breathing
fills the tracks;
cold women, ready for departure
smooth their worn skirts
and ice steals through their hands like children
from whose touch they have already been parted.
Now like a summer
the train comes
beating the platform
with its blue wings.
The women stir. They sigh.
Feet slide
warm on a wooden stairway
then a voice calls and
milk drenched with aniseed
drawls on the walk to school.
At last they leave.
Their breathless neighbours
steal from the woods, the barns,
and tender straw
sticks to their palms.
A cow here in the June meadow
A cow here in the June meadow
where clouds pile, tower above tower.
We lie, buried in sunburn,
our picnic a warm
paper of street tastes,
she like a gold cloud
steps, moony.
Her silky rump dips
into the grasses, buffeting
a mass of seed ready to run off in flower.
We stroll under the elder, smell
wine, trace blackfly along its leaf-veins
then burning and yawning we pile
kisses onto the hot upholstery.
Now evening shivers along the water surface.
The cow, suddenly planted stands – her tender
skin pollened all over –
ready to nudge all night at the cold grasses,
her udder heavily and more heavily swinging.
Zelda
At Great Neck one Easter
were Scott
Ring Lardner
and Zelda, who sat
neck high in catalogues like reading cards
her hair in curl for
wild stories, applauded.
A drink, two drinks and a kiss.
Scott and Ring both love her –
gold-headed, sky-high Miss
Alabama. (The lioness
with still eyes and no affectations
doesn’t come into this.)
Some visitors said she ought
to do more housework, get herself taught
to cook.
Above all, find some silent occupation
rather than mess up Scott’s vocation.
In France her barriers were simplified.
Her husband developed a work ethic:
film actresses; puritan elegance;
tipped eyes spilling material
like fresh Americas. You see
said Scott they know about work, like me.
You can’t beat a writer for justifying adultery.
Zelda
always wanted to be a dancer
she said, writhing
among the gentians that smelled of medicine.
A dancer in a sweat lather is not beautiful.
A dancer’s mind can get fixed.
Give me a wooden floor, a practice dress,
a sheet of mirrors and hours of labour
and lie me with my spine to the floor
supple secure.
She handed these back too
with her gold head and her senses.
She asks for visits. She makes herself hollow
with tears, dropped in the same cup.
Here at the edge of her sensations
there is no chance.
Evening falls on her Montgomery verandah.
No cars come by. Her only visitor
his voice, slender along the telephone wire.
The Polish husband
The traffic halted
and for a moment
the broad green avenue
hung like a wave
while a woman crossing
stopped me and said
‘Can you show me my wedding?
– In which church is it going to be held?’
The lorries hooted at her
as she stood there on the island
for her cloak fell back
and under it her legs were bare.
Her hair was dyed blonde
and her sad face deeply tanned.
I asked her ‘What is the name of your husband?’
She wasn’t sure, but she knew his first name was Joe,
she’d met him in Poland
and this was the time for the wedding.
There was a cathedral behind us
and a sign to the centre of the town.
‘I am not an expert on weddings,’
I said, ‘but take that honey-coloured building
which squats on its lawns like a cat –
at least there’s music playing inside it.’
So she ran with her heels tapping
and the long, narrow folds of her cloak falling apart.
A veil on wire flew from her head,
her white figure ducked in the porch and blew out.
But Joe, the Polish man. In the rush of this town
I can’t say whether she even found him
to go up the incense-heavy church beside him
under the bridal weight of her clothes,
or whether he was one of the lorry drivers
to whom her brown, hurrying legs were exposed.
The damson
Where have you gone
small child,
the damson bloom
on your eyes
the still heap
of your flesh
lightly composed
in a grey shawl,
your skull’s pulse
stains you,
the veins slip deep.
Two lights burn
at the mouth of the cave
where the air’s thin
and the tunnels boom
with your slippery blood.
Your unripe cheeks cling
to the leaves, to the wall,
your grasp unpeels
and your bruises murmur
while blueness clouds
on the down of your eyes,
your tears erode
and your smile files
through your lips like a soldier
who shoots at the sky
and you flash up in silver;
where are you now
little one,
peeled almond,
damson bloom?
In Rodmell Garden
It’s past nine and breakfast is over.
With morning frost on my hands I cross
the white grass, and go nowhere.
It’s icy: domestic. A grain
of coffee burns my tongue. Its heat
folds into the first cigarette.
The garden and air are still.
I am a stone and the world falls from me.
I feel untouchable – a new planet
where life knows it isn’t safe to begin.
From silver flakes of ash I shape
a fin and watch it with anguish.
I hear apples rolling above me;
November twigs; a bare existence –
my sister is a marvellous
Her blood flushes her skin
but mine is trapped. Occasional moments
allow me to bathe in their dumb sweetness.
My loose pips ripen. My night subsides
rushing, like the long glide of an owl.
Raw peace. A pale, frost-lit morning.
The black treads of my husband on the lawn
as he goes from the house to the loft
laying out apples.
The apple fall
In a back garden I’m painting
the outside toilet in shell and antelope.
The big domestic bramley tree
hangs close to me, rosy and leafless.
Sometimes an apple thumps
into the bushes I’ve spattered with turpentine
while my brush moves with a suck
over the burnt-off door frame.
Towels from the massage parlour
are out on the line next door:
all those bodies sweating into them
each day – the fabric stiffening –
towels bodiless and sex over.
I load the brush with paint again
and I hear myself breathing.
Sun slips off the wall
so the yard is cool
and lumbered with shadows,
and then a cannonade of apples
punches the wall and my arms,
the ripe stripes on their cheeks fall open,
flesh spurts and the juices fizz and glisten.
Pharaoh’s daughter
The slowly moving river in summer
where bulrushes, mallow and water forget-me-not
slip to their still faces.
A child’s body
joins their reflections,
his plastic boat
drifts into midstream
and though I lean down to
brown water that smells of peppermint
I can’t get at it:
my willow branch flails and pushes the boat outwards.
He smiles quickly
and tells me it doesn’t matter;
my feet grip in the mud
and mash blue flowers under them.
Then we go home
masking with summer days the misery
that has haunted a whole summer.
I think once of the Egyptian woman
who drew a baby from the bulrushes
hearing it mew in the damp
odrorous growth holding its cradle.
There’s nothing here but the boat
caught by its string
and through this shimmering day I struggle
drawn down by the webbed
years, the child’s life cradled within.
Domestic poem
So, how decisive a house is:
quilted, a net of blood and green
droops on repeated actions at nightfall.
A bath run through the wall
comforts the older boy sleeping
meshed in the odours of breath and Calpol
while in the maternity hospital
ancillaries rinse out the blood bottles;
the feel and the spore
of babies’ sleep stays here.
Later, some flat-packed plastic
swells to a parachute of oxygen
holding the sick through their downspin,
now I am well enough, I
iron, and place the folded sheets in bags
from which I shall take them, identical,
after the birth of my child.
And now the house closes us,
close on us,
like fruit we rest in its warm branches
and though it’s time for the child to come
nobody knows it, the night passes
while I sleepwalk the summer heat.
Months shunt me and I bring you
like an old engine hauling the blue
spaces that flash between track and train time.
Mist rises, smelling of petrol’s
burnt offerings, new born,
oily and huge, the lorries drum
on Stokes’ Croft,
out of the bathroom mirror the sky
is blue and pale as a Chinese mountain.