Child's song

Christmas in England, and her sister, a prim porcelain doll,
is given a shiny satin dress with puffed sleeves.
She gets a red hard-covered book, and a rainbow-coloured pencil.
Their girlish voices pipe
the child’s ditty her sister learnt at their new school.

There once lived a man/
he had a funny name/
his legs were long and his feet were small/
and he could not walk at all.’

She scrawls her first fumbling poem about a minstrel,
singing a song of the times ‘beyond.’
Even at eight, she is dreaming of escape.
Lonely letters slide across the page,
looking for love.

‘He had a wife/
did this funny man/
her legs were long and her feet were small/
and she could not walk at all.’

She draws a sombre Victorian woman in a black dress and cap,
her back turned away from a febrile tree.
In the gloom the family plays Cluedo,
she lets her father win.
Later, running in the park, he leaves her far behind.

‘He had children/
one and two/
their legs were long/
and their feet were small/
and they could not walk at all.’

The demons that you fight now,
a quarter of a century later,
are only paper tigers.
Yet still you rage for the unseen child,
reaching into the centre of loss,
finding nothing.

17.10