History and Myth

 

Names fall down the years

and a long march

continues past your eye.

Listen. Listen.

Are all words clear, tales firm,

or do they waver over

the shifting hills

beyond your exact window,

beyond the shriek of a queen

raving at her daughter’s death,

throat slit by a god-struck father,

beyond your room cuddled

in books that limit the notes

in your cramped hand?

History’s out

at the echo of moaning,

the gushing death,

the long outrage of alien works.

Bothering Day

 

“Stop. Enough. It’s Sunday.”

“Da-ad, it’s practice. I have to.”

“The garden, then. Give me peace.”

Flute songs pierce the screen

the willow weaves with its leaves.

She slouches beneath the boughs,

flute flashing straight,

silver and cool

among their mottling branches.

Fine as Puck, ungathered

she turns her back, halts,

a stutter under her hand,

a scatter over the lawn.

Her fingers walk

the dappling on her knee,

hold to the edge

where light does not burn,

nor the dark freeze.

Fortune’s Maggot

Hark, the hungry hoards are raging

through the ruins, loud and clear.

Distant, slinking dogs are baying,

mother’s heart is turned with fear.

Tattered beggars circle, wheedling,

“Come, give us your tiny one.

She with swallows will be wheeling

in darkened skies that cloud the sun.”

“Come, give us your little daughter.

We will tell her future ways

from her hand, then hear her laughter

as knuckle-bones she learns and plays.”

Cross the baby’s hand with silver,

cross her heart and look to die,

stabbed straight through the gut by mother

in whose hands the daggers lie.

Beggars’ chests are gored near knife-pits,

on the ground the blood-pool dries.

Mother’s transfixed by her lost wits

while, above, the pocked moons rise.

 

St Margaret’s Well

The font we reach

is grimed by the road,

dark where waters gather.

Wrappers and cans

choke the surface;

the black vault drips.

“It’s too quiet,” you say,

pitching a stone through paper,

this day’s order.

We watch rubbish ripple,

tap an acute edge.

“What’s wrong?” you ask,

turning to go,

“It’s not the original;

once it had another name.”

 

Still

 

We were out in the air,

waiting to start the new year

and froze in the light

of the house where I first heard

chants from the church in the square,

our shadows thin on the snow,

unable to leap from midnight to morning,

ghosts at the end of a calendar,

living unfinished

while bells went unrung.

The wind struck shudders among us,

making my dull heart thump.