to lie out beneath them. Even as children we know
what cold is, and aloneness, absence of touch. We seed
the night sky with stories like our own: snub-breasted
blond topless Lolitas laying out samples
of their charms beside dimpled ponds, barefoot un-bearded
striplings ready with bow and badinage, pursued
and lost and grieved over by inconsolable immortals
and set eternally adrift, a slow cascade
of luminary dust above the earth, with the companionable
creatures, bear, lion, swan, who share with us the upland
fells and meadow-flats of a rogue planet tossed
into space and by wild haphazard or amazing
grace sent spinning. Old consolations, only half
believed in, though like children we hold them dear, as if their names
on our tongue could bring them close and make,
like theirs, the bitter sweet-stuff of our story
to someone, somewhere out there,
remembered, and fondly, when we are gone.
Ladybird
Childhood visitors,
the surprise of
their presence a kind of grace.
Kindest of all the ladybird,
neither lady
(unless like so much else
in those days disguised
in a witch’s spell) nor
bird but an amber-beadlike
jewel that pinned itself
to our breast; a reward for
some good deed we did not
know we’d done, or earnest
of a good world’s good will
towards us. Ladybird, ladybird,
fly away home, we sang,
our full hearts lifted
by all that was best
in us, pity for what
like us was small (but why
was her house on fire?), and sped her
on her way with the same breath
we used to snuff out birthdays
on a cake, the break and flare
of her wings the flame that leapt
from the match, snug
in its box, snug in our fist under the house
that out of hand went sprinting
up stairwells, and stamped and roared
about us. Ladybird,
mother, quick, fly
home! The house, our hair, everything close
and dear, even the air,
is burning! In our hands
(we had no warning
of this) the world is alive and dangerous.
Garden Poems
Touching the Earth
The season when all is scrabble,
and surge and disintegration: worms
in their black café a pinchgut Versailles rabble
remaking the earth, processing tea-bags, vegetable scraps, and hot
from the press news of the underworld, the fast lane,
to slow food for the planet.
Plum-blossom, briar rose,
commingling. Overhead pure flow, a commodious blue fine-brushed with cirrus.
In our part of the world we call this
Spring. Elsewhere it happens other
— wise and in other words, or with no words
at all under fin-shaped palm-frond and fern in greenhouse weather.
But here we call it Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns,
fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun,
to touching in the dark. And the old man’s?
To worms in their garden box; stepping aside
a moment in a poem that will remember,
fitfully, who made it and the discord
and stammer, and change of heart and catch of breath
it sprang from. A bending down
lightly to touch the earth.
The Spell
Needlepoints of light
rain pick out a web and I am caught. The garden,
its double iron-barred gate
and the prunus pushing out
on its own path under paving-stones, floats free
and trembles. It might be gravity suspended,
or an odd angle
of time that a slight glance sideways
catches so that the whole
enterprise unsteadies, no longer instant
underfoot. What centres it,
when all has been riddled through
and questioned, is the spider, dark
death’s head paramour and spell
— binder. Ablaze
in solar isolation,
it dwindles at the end of its span, its spittle-thread
of inner fire unravelled
in a riot of marigolds, and the spell so light
on the senses yet so strong,
and still unbroken.
After
I bend to it willingly, this patch
of earth and its green things, in their own world
(though I hold the title to it) hungry for life
and tenure. Here they are weeds to be uprooted:
a limited easy task, the damp and crumble
I’ve lived with since my first
mouthful of it, the peck
of dirt I’m still working through. All round, a suntrap,
the garden-glitter of webs. Tree
— spiders that like the weeds, our late-spring sunlight
colluding, would choke
the lot to keep their hold. Live and let live? Not yet, not
here. Inside, the phone
intrudes. Another world calls and I scurry
in, struck by the coolness of a place that is all surface
polish and appliance. Too late! The message,
if there is one, hangs
in the silence, in the air
of abeyance that attends
on hasty departure: the breathless hush, lightly expectant,
of After.
Inner City
A picture-book street with pop-up gardens, asphalt
bleached to take us down a degree or two
when summer strips and swelters. All things green,
wood sorrel, dandelion, in this urban village
salad not weeds, and food for everyone, including
rats and the phantom night-thieves who with barrow
and spade tip-toe in under the windchimes to cart off virtual
orchards of kaffir limes. Good citizens all
of Chippendale and a planet sore of body
and soul that needs saving, and by more
than faith-healing or grace — good works and elbow
grease, a back set to it, compost bins,
the soy of human kindness. In the late splendour
of early daylight saving, stars regroup
for breakthrough, mynah and honey-eater tuck
their head under a wing, ants at shiftwork
in their gulag conurbations soldier on; and hunters, clean
of hand and clear of conscience, down
tools, troop home to pork-chop plastic packs, and gatherers
gather for hugs and mugs of steaming chai.
The planet, saved for another day, stokes up
its slow-burning gases and toxic dust, gold rift and scarlet
gash that take our breath away; a world at its interminable
show of holy dying. And we go with it, the old
gatherer and hunter. To its gaudy-day, though the contribution
is small, adding our handsel of warm clay.
An Aside on the Sublime
A Ground Thrush,
the latest of many such
occasional companions,
is scribbling the dusk
with its signature
tune, a high five
sol-fa-sol-fa-doh, at each
da capo plainly astonished
by its own sufficiency.
I stand and listen,
happy to yield
the day, the scene, the privilege of being
the one here who will embellish
the hour with all it needs, beyond
silence, of manifesto. Which
the land, as it breathes out warm night
odours and settles,
takes as an usher’s
aside on the sublime.
A footnote, Eine Kleine Background Music,
to its blindfold, trancelike