What god will catch me
when I’ m down, when I’ ve taken
sufficient drink to reveal
myself, when my words are little
more than a blurring
of consonant and vowel?
I’ m drunk on spring:
branches of waxy leaves that
greet me at my driveway,
a family clutching
trays of sweets.
How can I sing of this?
If I cannot sing, then
make me mute. Or lend me
words, send me
the taste of another’ s prayer,
cool as a coin
newly minted on the tongue.
As a teenager
she was like any other,
boys, the craic,
smoking down the backs.
Later there was talk
she broke things,
furniture and glass,
her mother’ s heart.
‘Mad at the world,’
the old women nod,
round each other’ s faces.
But it was more
than that
and for less
she was punished.
That weekend
she didn’ t leave a cup alone
every chair hit the wall,
Philomena’ s revenge.
Soon after
she was shifted
and given the shocks.
The perfect satisfaction
of wine, cigarettes, the sun
at an afternoon angle
passes through flesh
as if flesh were a sieve
to the direct point
the soul of matter.
Things fix time
although the sun moves
lazily, creating an image
that seems like motive
the wine transmutes
and becomes blood
cigarettes dissolve
to blue threads and ash
but the sun continues
in constant repetition
of its slow and rather boring dance.
adieu
Once when I was harmless
and didn’ t know any better,
a mirror to the front of me
and an ocean behind,
I lay wedged in the middle of daylight,
paper-doll thin, dreaming,
then I vanished. I gave the day a fingerprint,
then forgot.
I sat naked on a towel
on a hot June Monday.
The sun etched the inside of my eyelids,
while a boy dozed at my side.
The smell of all oceans was around us —
steamy salt, shell, and sweat,
but I reached for the distant one.
A tide rose while I slept,
In the past we listened to photographs. They heard our voice speak.
Alive, active. What had been distance was memory. Dusk came,
Pushed us forward, emptying the laboratoryeach night undisturbed by
Erasure.
— — —
When there is only one old man on earth, lonely, peaceful, handsome, living in unsurpassed luxury, then I am at your feet.
When I have realized all your memories, — when I am the girl who can tie your hands, — then I will stifle you.
When we are very strong, who draws back? or very happy, who collapses from ridicule? When we are very bad, what can they do to us.
Dress up, dance, laugh. I will never be able to throw Love out of the window.
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like dust above the towns,
Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in the midst of the downs,
Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain along the street,
Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in expectancy to meet
The luminous mist which the poor things wist was dawn arriving across the sky,
When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town has driven so high.
Wondered Knob-Cracker at Stout-Heart:
‘Are you timed by your will, does your pulse
List credit, ready to slam like a till?
Can you keep it up? ’
Growled Beard Splitter to Smug:
‘Your forces delay, bibbing at Northern walls
While snow drives rifts between, barring the way.
I am sufficient. ’
