Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
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
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
Friday, October 3, 2008
Menage-a-trois
Lost in talk, we walk down the hill
towards a river of road.
The capsicum pot-plant holds its strange red fruit aloft
as you bear it awkwardly in your hands,
speaking of your wife, and how you owe her flowers.
Carting my own star-jasmine, tethered to a wooden stick,
and furtive dhania, to the car – we came separately –
I feel the raspberry cheesecake we just shared at the café above the nursery,
sit heavy in my stomach. like woe.
You wheel your car around
– and with a careful wave, drive off –
leaving me, hot-faced, heavy –
scrabbling to collect the coins that just fell out of my purse
into the gravel in the gutter.
Like a CD track that has gotten stuck
she plays out the old old song –
‘the girl at the window/
waited all day for her father to come home/
thought that if she flirted with him/
he might love her more.’
At the table beneath the spreading fig tree,
I let you see my black bra-strap slip
from behind my green-yoked dress.
Felt your glance stroke my hair,
as you told me about paying your bond (and hers).
Trading my beauty
for the brief feeling of being seen
is like letting myself be
Sampson
and you
and your wife, Delilah.
My strength,
shorn,
to a sorry pile of stones.
3.10
towards a river of road.
The capsicum pot-plant holds its strange red fruit aloft
as you bear it awkwardly in your hands,
speaking of your wife, and how you owe her flowers.
Carting my own star-jasmine, tethered to a wooden stick,
and furtive dhania, to the car – we came separately –
I feel the raspberry cheesecake we just shared at the café above the nursery,
sit heavy in my stomach. like woe.
You wheel your car around
– and with a careful wave, drive off –
leaving me, hot-faced, heavy –
scrabbling to collect the coins that just fell out of my purse
into the gravel in the gutter.
Like a CD track that has gotten stuck
she plays out the old old song –
‘the girl at the window/
waited all day for her father to come home/
thought that if she flirted with him/
he might love her more.’
At the table beneath the spreading fig tree,
I let you see my black bra-strap slip
from behind my green-yoked dress.
Felt your glance stroke my hair,
as you told me about paying your bond (and hers).
Trading my beauty
for the brief feeling of being seen
is like letting myself be
Sampson
and you
and your wife, Delilah.
My strength,
shorn,
to a sorry pile of stones.
3.10
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Spa
The dark settling with the dust
under the bluegums -
in the sky, a sharp cusp of yellow
holds the heavy round of moon in place.
She finds
Aliwal North spa
hidden in suburbia,
an anomaly.
neglected –
the plush lawns of the eighties,
replaced
by sand,
watchful Africans,
instead of well-off Afrikaners,
the guests.
She leaves the shelter of the big car
she has driven all day,
next to the shed,
and holding her boy’s hand,
follows the security guard
into its shadows.
A few pale discs of neon
flicker overhead,
illuminating a rectangle of
blue bubbling water
– bloodwarm.
Glossy tropical plants fringe the pool,
but pigeon-feathers
fleck its troubled surface.
A jagged rent
in the ceiling reveals tacit stars,
receding.
The lopsided Spur poster on the stairwell
in the corner
speaks of better days.
She remembers
tawny children,
her own lithe sixteen year-old body
trawling the waters.
Now, a mother,
heavier,
she wades,
carries her laughing boy
across the ferment,
emerging
from the earth’s womb.
Together,
they hold their breaths,
drop under,
into the heat of the heartbeat,
that pulses through
dirty white wooden floorboards.
The glass of the French doors
permits a night-time view onto thatched umbrellas, secretive palms –
as impressions of plants and moving water
reverberate against
its stillness.
Rafters angle
high above her,
rational, elusive.
She lets
the silver handrail
slip from her hands
the water
caresses the back of her head,
tender as a lover.
4.9.08
under the bluegums -
in the sky, a sharp cusp of yellow
holds the heavy round of moon in place.
She finds
Aliwal North spa
hidden in suburbia,
an anomaly.
neglected –
the plush lawns of the eighties,
replaced
by sand,
watchful Africans,
instead of well-off Afrikaners,
the guests.
She leaves the shelter of the big car
she has driven all day,
next to the shed,
and holding her boy’s hand,
follows the security guard
into its shadows.
A few pale discs of neon
flicker overhead,
illuminating a rectangle of
blue bubbling water
– bloodwarm.
Glossy tropical plants fringe the pool,
but pigeon-feathers
fleck its troubled surface.
A jagged rent
in the ceiling reveals tacit stars,
receding.
The lopsided Spur poster on the stairwell
in the corner
speaks of better days.
She remembers
tawny children,
her own lithe sixteen year-old body
trawling the waters.
Now, a mother,
heavier,
she wades,
carries her laughing boy
across the ferment,
emerging
from the earth’s womb.
Together,
they hold their breaths,
drop under,
into the heat of the heartbeat,
that pulses through
dirty white wooden floorboards.
The glass of the French doors
permits a night-time view onto thatched umbrellas, secretive palms –
as impressions of plants and moving water
reverberate against
its stillness.
Rafters angle
high above her,
rational, elusive.
She lets
the silver handrail
slip from her hands
the water
caresses the back of her head,
tender as a lover.
4.9.08
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Reading Plath
Outside in the forest –
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.
Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.
Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.
A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.
Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.
The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.
No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.
Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.
Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.
Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark
with a mind
on fire.
21.8
References
‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.
Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.
Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.
A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.
Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.
The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.
No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.
Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.
Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.
Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark
with a mind
on fire.
21.8
References
‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)
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