the paper-tissue sails of galleons, the waterlogged branches of submarines – all came to ruin and were on flame in that dusk-red pond. And you, mother, stood behind me, impatient to be going, old at twenty-three, alone, thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us.

In a hospital a mile or so from that pond I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes, reach out across forty years to touch once more that pond’s cool surface, and it is your cool skin I’m touching; for as on a pond a child’s paper boat was blown out of reach by the smallest gust of wind, so too have you been blown out of reach by the smallest whisper of death, and a childhood memory is sharpened, and the heart bums as that armada burnt, long, long ago.

The Betrayal

By the time I got to where I had no intention of going

Half a lifetime had passed.

I’d sleepwalked so long. While I dozed

Houses outside which gas-lamps had spluttered

Were pulled down and replaced,

And my background was wiped from the face of the earth.

There was so much I ought to have recorded.

So many lives that have vanished –

Families, neighbours; people whose pockets

Were worn thin by hope. They were

The loose change history spent without caring.

Now they have become the air I breathe,

Not to have marked their passing seems such a betrayal.

Other things caught my attention:

A caterpillar climbing a tree in a playground,

A butterfly resting on a doorknob.

And my grandmother’s hands!

Though I saw those poor, sleeping hands

Opening and closing like talons,

I did not see the grief they were grasping.

The seed of my long alienation from those I loved

Was wrapped in daydreams.

Something I’ve never been able to pinpoint

Led me away from the blood I ought to have recorded.

I search my history for reasons, for omens. But what use now

Zodiacs, or fabulous and complicated charts

Offered up by fly-brained astrologers?

What use now supplications?

In the clouds’ entrails I constantly failed

To read the true nature of my betrayal.

What those who shaped me could not articulate

Still howls for recognition as a century closes,

And their homes are pulled down and replaced,

And their backgrounds are wiped from the face of the earth.

The Eavesdropper

From my vantage point on the top stair

of a house that no longer exists,

I sat like a cabin boy who listens in secret

to the crew of a great, creaking ship,

and eavesdropped on the adults below me.

A dial searched through the static

of radio wavelengths. Band music.

A fug of voices. Light. Comfort.

Soporific sounds cotton-wrapped the heart

and sent me, a little spy, sleepwards.

I do not know what happened while I slept,

Nor how long I slept. I cannot say.

But waking, I peered down into darkness.

No voices. Silence. In a blink it seemed

Familiar objects had become antiquated.

Whatever secrets I had hoped to uncover

were never uncovered, and now

are covered by gravestones or burnt to ashes.

I cannot blame that child his lack of attention.

He would have understood their secrets

no more than I can understand why, once again,

I attempt to eavesdrop on them,

and move down, stair by stair, towards them.

Echoes

With arthritic hands and red-varnished nails

She drags herself up the wooden stairs,

The frightening heartbeat of the house

Is made by her iron callipers.

The bomb-crushed legs, the bolted bones,

The hands that scrape like talons on the stairs,

The damned-up pain, the hate, the grief;

The soul crushed by iron callipers.

Beneath grey government-issue blankets I

Lie

Скачать книгу