December 25th, 12 pm

No, honestly, we are more organised than we look.
The piles of clothes are all washed.
I have fed the birds, then the cats.
Now the cats are out: catching birds.
It starts to unravel. The cream will not whip,
It mocks the whisk in white hissing waves.
The cat flies the long grass, scattering wings,
The creased pale blouses shiver and fall.
Time, I think, to drink, then wander
The flooded footpaths, to waver and call
And Christmas, and Merry, and to you all.
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Relics

I have come to see the angel
With her worn stone nose.
She came from the old church.
No one knows

Why it burnt down.
Knocked candle? Cromwell’s men?
The Victorians’ vestry
Raised her into rain.

I have no right to come here.
Their God and I are strangers.
They pinned her to an inner wall
Out of the weather’s dangers

Out of the wind of lime-flower
Out of the sunlight’s tide.
I drink her gaze, then leave her.
She hobbles at my side.

Before the hay

This is the grass which hides the weed,
Ragwort, for which we trudge to look:
Grass whose plumes make lakes of jeans,
Grass which made the pony lame,
Threatened her life with poisoned blood,
Grass whose stems kiss on our graves.

The child I thought would trail and whine;
Raised dripping in her mother’s arms
Says dreamily, “The colours shine,
See the colours!” Nod and pass
Silvered purples, sighed greens, soft creams.
These are our flowers. This is the grass.

(Published in "The Rialto")    Top

Late again

Time (I say quickly) is giving me grief.
Computers nibble it. Sleep devours it.
I have lost the tree in the clutter of leaf.

Time will bring me the lighter evenings,
The sheath of the tulip, the call from a friend.
Time will weigh me, mock me, dismay me.
Time is the clocks' dream. Time will end.

(Published in "The Rialto")    Top

Arabian nights

I think "Baghdad". It is not real,
The fairytales I never read,
The palace where a huge man stalks
Marbled, chilled and dead.

I read the dried fruit packet:
"Added sugar: none.
There are forty kinds of dates
In Iraq alone."

The dry gold dates, the wet black dates,
Plump dates where stones lie deep,
The planes which sweep the borders,
The child who cannot sleep.
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The story of Sigurd

"Tell me again, more slowly.
I did not understand."
"The young king, fresh from marriage,
Rode to a neighbour's land.
He changed shape with the other
Yet kept his own clear mind."
"But why?" "They thought (as you may)
To take what they could find.

There was a girl - now listen -
As bright, as fierce as air.
He courted her in his friend's shape
His eyes looked through her there.
She stretched out her strong hand to him
But when he bedded her
He laid a sword with damasked edge
Between them, sharp and bare."

"So did they reach across the blade
To breast or thigh's curve?" "No.
Eight days they spent together
Eight deep nights, sleeping so.
When they rode from her country
The false mind took the true,
A husband with familiar face
But not the man she knew."

"How can this end?" "Too quickly:
She plotted, so he died.
She held no thought for his kind wife
Who huddled, small, and cried.
She left her sleeping husband
Whose bed sank soft and wide
Stabbed her heart with the king's sword
Then lay down by his side."

"This is an old, bad story
Whose truth cannot be known,
A knot now pulled too tightly
The hand which tied it gone.
How can I understand it
Whose pain is not my own?"
"The blade you lay beneath your sheets
Will cut you to the bone."

(From "The story of Sigurd" by Alison Brackenbury, a fine press limited signed edition of nine new poems, traditionally printed on mould-made paper and illustrated by a specially commissioned wood engraving by the artist Jane Lydbury. It is available at £32, including post and packing, from The Gruffyground Press, Ladram, Sidcot, Winscombe, Somerset, BS25 1PW.)    Top