Glad of These Times Read online

  We are the grown-ups, they the children

  sent to bed while the sun is shining,

  with a quilt to keep them warm.

  We are the clothed, and they the naked.

  Their dress of flesh has slipped off.

  If they had a shroud, it has rotted.

  We are old beside the purity of their hope,

  those drowned mariners

  anchored in salvation,

  we bring nothing but a stare

  of fickle, transient wonder,

  but they make their own flowers –

  a flush of primroses,

  dog violets, foxgloves

  taller than children, rusty montbretia –

  and at Christmas they give birth

  to the first daffodils

  startled from the earth.

  Getting into the car

  No, they won’t gather their white skirts

  before stooping to enter

  the deep-buttoned wedding car,

  having placed their flowers

  in the bridesmaid’s fingers,

  hand-tied, unravelling.

  They won’t wipe the delicate sweat

  of condensation, and wave

  one last time,

  no, not for them the fat-tyred Mercedes

  or mothers swooping to bless

  with tweaks and kisses.

  How the wedding car smells of skin

  and heat, and dry-cleaning of suits –

  but no, it will not happen.

  Girls, it is your fortune

  to be outside a club at 3 A.M.

  to be spangled and beautiful

  but to pick the wrong men,

  to get into the car with them

  and go where they are going

  over the black river, under the black river

  where your eyes will be wiped of sight

  and your bodies of breathing.

  Glad of these times

  Driving along the motorway

  swerving the packed lanes

  I am glad of these times.

  Because I did not die in childbirth

  because my children will survive me

  I am glad of these times.

  I am not hungry, I do not curtsey,

  I lock my door with my own key

  and I am glad of these times,

  glad of central heating and cable TV

  glad of e-mail and keyhole surgery

  glad of power showers and washing machines,

  glad of polio inoculations

  glad of three weeks’ paid holiday

  glad of smart cards and cashback,

  glad of twenty types of yoghurt

  glad of cheap flights to Prague

  glad that I work.

  I do not breathe pure air or walk green lanes,

  see darkness, hear silence,

  make music, tell stories,

  tend the dead in their dying

  tend the newborn in their birthing,

  tend the fire in its breathing,

  but I am glad of my times,

  these times, the age

  we feel in our bones, our rage

  of tyre music, speed

  annulling the peasant graves

  of all my ancestors,

  glad of my hands on the wheel

  and the cloud of grit as it rises

  where JCBs move motherly

  widening the packed motorway.

  Off-script

  No, not a demonstration,

  but each of us refusing

  to learn our part.

  The chorus dissolves

  in ragged voices.

  There is nothing for the director to work with.

  We are quietly talking

  off-script to one another –

  ‘Yes, rhubarb with ginger –’

  ‘Indeed we are all made from the dust of stars’

  They are building houses

  on rainwet fields

  where the smoke of horses

  has barely cleared –

  indeed we are all made from the dust of stars,

  even these houses are made from the dust of stars

  whose light gallops towards us –

  in the remotest corner

  of the black-wet universe

  there is a galaxy

  of bright horses –

  Tulip

  How cool the lovely bulb of your roundness.

  Bare-faced and sleek, you rise from your leaves.

  You have the skin of a raindrop.

  Blink, and your green flushes scarlet.

  Poised on the catwalk of spring, you’ll move

  in your own time, smile when you want to.

  Nothing comes up to you. Forget-me-nots

  crowd at your roots, my fingers

  hover, narcissi rustle

  but you are still. Only the sun touches you.

  Finger by finger it opens your petals

  loosens the lovely bulb of your roundness,

  makes you swagger in your exposure,

  knows, as you don’t, that it can’t last long.

  Beautiful today the

  banana plants, camellia, echium, wild garlic flower’s

  rank tang of a more northern spring,

  beautiful today the surf on Porthkidney Beach

  and the standing out of the lighthouse, sheer

  because of the rain past, the rain to come, the rain

  that has brought this cliff-side to jungle thickness.

  The hammock’s green with a winter of rain, beautiful today

  the bamboo, wrist-thick. Was it on this

  foothold, this shelf, this terrace, it learned

  to surf on a hiss of breeze, was it today

  that taught this dry handshake of leaves

  against the pull of tide on Porthkidney Beach?

  A step, a seat, a stare to the east

  where light springs from a wasteland

  beyond where the wet sun dawns –

  beautiful today, sun shakes from its shoulders

  the night tides. In a wasteland of easterly light

  sun makes play on the waves

  but the hollow surf turns over and over

  and nobody comes, only a track of footprints

  runs to the sea, and the tall pines

  make shapes of their limbs – beautiful today

  the dazzle they capture as landscape,

  the resin they ooze from their wounds.

  White planks are full of washed-away footsteps, beautiful

  today the graining of sweat and flesh. This shell

  wears at its heart a coil

  to last when the curves are gone – but today

  the flush of light, the flowering of freckles

  on tender skin are helplessly present

  in the hour between pallor and sunburn,

  while the banana plant wears its heart in a fist

  of tiny fruit that will never ripen or open.

  In the distance, the little town

  waits for its saint to sail in on a leaf

  for the second time, and bless its legion of roofs.

  Dead gull on Porthmeor

  You could use his wing as a fan

  to rid yourself of dreams,

  you could light a candle at midnight

  in the flooded beach hut

  and hear the wooden flute

  waver its music

  like a drop of rain

  into a storm,

  and the sea would prowl

  along the black-wet horizon

  and the sand would shine

  as white as corn

  ready for winnowing.

  Yes, you could use his wing as a fan.

  Narcissi

  Everything changes to black and white –

  the shaggy wreck of the Alba,

  the shine of the neap tide

  where the drowned funnels gulp for air

  and the waves break
like narcissi,

  or the dog that skids to a stop, then quivers

  all over, shaking a floss of water

  to hide the Island.

  The sea begins to smell of flowers

  as the tide turns from its lair,

  the narcissi flake off one by one

  from that rust-bucket slumped in the sand –

  the Alba’s an old hand at drowning.

  I was two when they first plumped me down

  between Man’s Head and the Island

  where fox-trails of water ran out

  over Porthmeor strand.

  I smell something which reminds me

  of not being born,

  my mother walks on the shoreline

  a figure or maybe a figurehead

  with a smile of wood.

  In the big glare of the white day

  I clutch at the sand’s

  talkative hiss of grains,

  lose my balance, and suddenly

  scud on all fours

  into the narcissi.

  Dolphins whistling

  Yes, we believed that the oceans were endless

  surging with whales, serpents and mermaids,

  demon-haunted and full of sweet voices

  to lure us over the edge of the world,

  we were conquerors, pirates, explorers, vagabonds

  war-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed

  the wave’s furrow, made maps

  that led others to the sea’s harvest

  and sometimes we believed we heard dolphins whistling,

  through the wine-dark waters we heard dolphins whistling.

  We were restless and the oceans were endless,

  rich in cod and silver-scaled herring

  so thick with pilchard we dipped in our buckets

  and threw the waste on the fields to rot,

  we were mariners, fishers of Iceland, Newfoundlanders

  fortune-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed

  the wave’s furrow and earned our harvest

  hungrily trawling the broad waters,

  and sometimes we believed we heard dolphins whistling,

  through blue-green depths we heard dolphins whistling.

  The catch was good and the oceans were endless

  so we fed them with run-off and chemical rivers

  pair-fished them, scoured the sea-bed for pearls

  and searched the deep where the sperm-whale plays,

  we were ambergris merchants, fish farmers, cod-bank strippers

  coral-crushers, reef-poisoners, we ploughed

  the sea’s furrow and seized our harvest

  although we had to go far to find it

  for the fish grew small and the whales were strangers,

  coral was grey and cod-banks empty,

  algae bloomed and the pilchards vanished

  while the huer’s lookout was sold for a chalet,

  and the dolphins called their names to one another

  through the dark spaces of the water

  as mothers call their children at nightfall

  and grow fearful for an answer.

  We were conquerors, pirates, explorers, vagabonds

  war-makers, sea-rovers, we ploughed

  the wave’s furrow, drew maps

  to leads others to the sea’s harvest,

  and we believed that the oceans were endless

  and we believed we could hear the dolphins whistling.

  Borrowed light

  Such a connoisseur of borrowed light!

  Pale as a figurehead, undismayed

  by the rough footpath

  you climbed towards the view.

  At the top, silent, you would breathe in

  the spread of land you didn’t care to own,

  your face for a moment stern

  and rapt, careless of children.

  Such a connoisseur of borrowed light!

  Even when your voice grew harsh

  as those small stones rattling

  down the adder path,

  or when a January wind

  harried cloud shadows

  over the built-up valleys

  you would climb as far as that boulder

  where the view began,

  and watch its unravelling.

  You met equally

  the landscape knitting itself

  from russet, indigo

  and crawling tractors,

  or the blinding stare of the sea.

  A winter imagination

  Surely it’s not too much to ask

  from a winter imagination:

  the clattering of chairs onto a pavement

  the promptness of waiters before days waste them

  and of course, the flickering of leaves,

  the insouciant, constant

  rapture of following the breeze.

  Last night my daughter dreamed

  that we would die, mother and father

  gone while she stood watching.

  I soothed her in my arms, promised her husband,

  babies, troops of friends:

  like the defences of a vulnerable kingdom

  I named them, one by one. She slept rosily

  but for me the bone-cold passages

  still rang to her cry

  You’ll die and I’ll be alone.

  Surely it’s not too much to ask

  for a warm day to take away such dreams

  for violet, midge-haunted shadows

  under the sycamore that grows like a weed,

  for this year’s beautiful girls

  to flaunt their bellies, while the boys

  who won’t stop talking, trot to keep up.

  One of them is after my daughter

  but her lovely eyes are blue with distance.

  She is off at the gallop, dreamless.

  Athletes

  And what a load of leaf

  there was on the trees by June.

  From sticky fists

  rammed in the eye of the bud

  they’d opened wide,

  and when the wind blew

  the horse chestnuts were athletes

  running with torches of green

  in the half-marathon of summer.

  Pneumonia

  on our raft

  after the long night of storm

  the water bubbles

  the sea is calm

  the planks squeak lazily

  where the ropes chafe them

  the sea bulges

  ready to open

  why it should smell like jonquils

  no one knows

  the idling of the sun

  changes everything

  on our raft

  after the long night of storm

  the water bubbles

  eye-level

  why not watch it for ever

  Wall is the book

  (for Anne Stevenson)

  Wall is the book of these old lands

  each page scripted by stones,

  each lichen frond, orange or golden,

  wall’s stubborn illumination.

  Read wall slowly, for it takes time

  to grasp the sentence of stone.

  Wall breaks in a tumbled caesura

  of boulders. Read on

  where pucker of breeze on a tarn’s shield

  breaks the mirror of wall

  and bog cotton trembles. It rains

  on a draggle of sheep in the field

  where wall breaks the force

  and bite of steel from the north

  whence weather and danger come.

  Wall is the holy book of these old lands

  each age scripted by stone.

  Gorse

  All through sour soil the gorse thrusts.

  It is rough furze first, chopped to free the fields.

  Burned off in sheets of carbon, it lives

  down at the roots, grappling peat sponge,

  black as an eclipse of the sun.

  Bu
t when the gorse is out of blossom

  kissing is then out of fashion.

  Like ill-fitting shoes, gorse flowers

  pinch and pinch until the sun touches them.

  Now in the lanes a spice of coconut,

  now the gorse thriving to wipe

  the eye of winter with a cloth of gold,

  now the bees in their bee kitchen

  pilot themselves above the spines,

  burrow past rapiers

  bumbling, lunge into flowers

  like drunks strangely kept safe

  in a world full of harms,

  and now it comes –

  a prickle of intricate buds

  a breath of perfume,

  a flare along the roadways, a torch

  barely mastered in the runner’s arms