January I

Pink

I ask to be taken

to the place

of the dead.

We go on a bus,

we get off at a fairground,

walk up and over a hill—

it is muddy and difficult.

At the top they point and say, “Here is

the pink city.”

Below are flesh-coloured coffins,

thrown like pulled teeth,

or rubber erasers.

People are dancing.

My cousin, Sylvia, says,

“It is witchcraft.”

“You have to keep cutting,” I say.

I move my fingers like scissors, snipping

the threads they throw

to catch us.

I cut thread after looping thread.

A man cries,

but we are not trapped,

we are not dead,

we are not caught

in the pink city.

Orange

My father remembers a young girl

who died of her burns.

The kids were jumping

a bonfire. She was very little,

she tried to do the same,

and fell in.

It was his first funeral. There was a

horse-drawn hearse, and buggies.

The mother walked behind,

crying, My Lala’s gone.

Yellow

I have two sweaters—the yellow one

that Stephen’s mother made,

and the pink, with holes, from the Sally Ann.

I give them to my daughter,

who may have followed me

down the cold road

that sprang up

from the fairground.

January II

I meet the dead buying groceries.

They hurry their bags to their cars,

drive off before I can catch them.

Much colder today:

we wait for the hearse, follow it,

squealing round corners,

race through the streets of Guildford,

lose sight of it, catch up…

There’s a backlog because of the holidays,

they’re on a tight schedule…

It’s January. People force themselves

on walks; their noses stream,

cows turn their backs.

At the end of a lane,

horses test the earth for hollows.

Reverend Strevens in his long black cloak

comes to bury you.

It’s January. Through the lych-gate,

under the yew. We stand.

What is dying? A ship sails and I stand watching….”

February I

February is for coats—secondhand coats.

In the seams of your blue tailored raincoat

I’ve sewn animal tails.

I put on the coat and go for a walk.

Branches fly past, the great trees toss their heads.

The earth is cold, the fires banked low.

When the storm comes—later, at night—

somewhere, inside a cave,

is a wall painting of a horse

and pictures of bison,

small deer, and dogs.

The colours are gold, red, ochre.

I am in the cave, painting, looking out at you

looking in at me,

and sewing a warm coat.

In the wind, while outside in your coat,

I met a ghost who had killed herself.

Her husband had murdered her lover;

she threw her children down a waterfall

near Tahsis.

She is distraught still.

I gave her the coat.

I came home wet.

February II

When I wear grief

like a helmet and armour,

when the horses are in the far field,

and the woods between are impassable,

I lie on the ground.

You have never seen me like this.

You would hear the horses and start walking,

look back at me with hate.

When I am done,

and my face is sour with salt,

I dream myself free

into my allowance of love,

let my grandmother lead me

into the forest

where I may never come out,

or find the horses,

or ride away,

though it is sweet

to remember her sweetness.

February Note

The world is dangerous.

The dead arrive at night to bring me presents:

(Dorothy Livesays snuff box, for instance).

I forget I am married.

I have a lover with a red condom.

When my uncle went water-skiing,

at eighty, my aunt crouched in the bow of the boat,

praying.

Now he is ill: people are taking his money;

he cannot walk,

he is always running.

March

I remember Stan appearing to Xan in a dream—

she rose, brimming with joy,

to float above the bed before she fainted.

He’d slipped through the door,

his shoes were polished;

she knew it was him

by the Arrow shirts, the grey slacks—

he’d returned from the land of the dead.

He said all was forgotten,

except for the feeling of lunch in the apartment,

the red dust,

horse fleas biting his legs

as he rides

across a stream

into mountains.

April

April opens with snow:

my house, the trees,

the fall of land

to the lake, turn white.

When we see where we are,

we’re flooded: water to the back steps

and inside over the floor.

Mr. Chalker appears in gum boots

and with buckets: we sweep water

away from coal sacks,

suitcases, books.

I go to bed (the window blank with

melting ice) and hold your sweater

to my face.

Somewhere, not many miles from here,

is a house. If I could find it,

the links of time would join.

Our room is there, a brass bedstead,

apples in the cellar,

our children, a grandmother:

my grandfather whips the little horse,

Forest, pulling the cutter—

we are cut off by the last

of spring snow.

When I walked to school,

I passed a wood

I called “Sad Crimes.”

One time I stopped and went in:

branches shifted—

it was spring.

White petals

swam the air.

I did not have

a question,

so stayed silent

behind a tree,

while a man

took a shovel to wet humus,

tilled out a shining coil of worms.

Tonight I stand at the window,

young buds prick the maple,

but I see snow from that last storm in St.

John’s when I stood,

with Mr. Chalker, broom in hand,

sweeping water

like a woman.

May

When they put me in the hospital,

I was Ophelia,

because Ophelia was mad,

and her lover had hurt her.

I understood Ophelia

when I looked up from my book

to see my lover open my blouse

with his knife.

I searched for her through boxes of books,

I looked through the town,

behind a church,

across a bridge

where lights stung the water,

and in a park

where my lover said,

Are you ready to find out

who you are?

When I was twelve, I went to the library.

The books spoke softly.

It was spring,

thin grass grew on the boulevard.

Next door was a sweet shop.

I went in and counted glass jars;

Ophelia stood on tiptoe in a dark room.

(When God tells you to do it,

you cross a bridge.)

June

for Jakob

Linda lived at the edge

of East London,

with a big wild hill

at the end of the street.

The wildness stopped

at an asylum. One day

a neighbour girl was grabbed

by a half-naked man,

but nothing happened.

Linda and I walk between hawthorn hedges,

buttercups and nettles blow,

the sheep, a Greek chorus, gather beneath an oak

to cry, you can’t have it all,

it is never enough,

you can’t stay here,

and if you do, you won’t like it.

We watch our words,

tread softly along the mown path

between graves

at the end of the lane,

look down

at the rich brown water

of midsummer.

If you say the wrong thing, says Linda,

you’ll end up dead.

I dream I am in the dark,

holding hands with Linda,

and others, in a chain.

I dream that somewhere

at the end of us

someone is made well.

July

A father hit golf balls

into a wire fence

and at black-headed gulls

and oyster catchers gathered

at the sewer outlet;

a child put clothes on and off;

a mother sat in the cold

and watched the power station

to the south.

Linda tramped north into the wind

to watch islands sink

and the estuary grow.

Then Linda wanted a drink,

so we drove for miles and took a road

and stopped on a square of gravel

in front of a house.

The house was closed,

but Linda hammered

on its great oak door.

Eddie opened it and said

it was unusual for people to knock

when the house was shut;

we’d woken him from his nap.

We sat near the window in the bar,

and Eddie, in deck shoes, paced in and out.

I began to weep

there, in the room across

from the long gallery,

beside the fireplace,

below the hidden hammer-beam ceiling

from the fifteenth century,

in a house first built in the twelfth century,

with a Norman dovecote nearby where there were

two thousand doves;

I thought at first the house shook,

but it was me,

filled with whatever could not be contained,

like the arrowhead on an arrow

or the perpetual stream.

Eddie said

the house liked some people.

Linda remained polite while Eddie explained

that the house met five ley lines

and sheltered twelve spirits,

one of whom was an abbot who illustrated books.

And another was himself,

Prior Eddie.

I wept on

as the view included a moat,

and an orchard where I used to walk.

Eddie said

did I remember the romps we took

in the meadow with orchids underfoot?

He padded near in his deck shoes,

grinned, touched my hair,

leaned in for a kiss.

Linda said

it was time to go.

An oak steadied a field,

the forest was smoke

(and the sorrow I felt

on leaving the house

has remained:

no charm but the mystery of

accident

to keep us sane).

August

for PK

Mrs. Mary Watson of Holly Cottage

has to drag a small mattress in

from the caravan to sleep us:

she’s a tiny hundred years old, with sharp eyes

The downy and pillow are scented,

the bathroom sink’s so small

I rinse one hand at a time

before I lie down.

Outside, are pale pink

and red roses, rhododendrons,

a stout box hedge:

beyond the hedge, a narrow road,

a pasture, forest and hills:

behind these

a stone-walled yard

in which a dozen huskies—

thousands of miles from home—

paw and howl.

Each afternoon

they run the track up Doon Hill:

the dogs are training for snow.

Black cows graze the hill,

slow as boulders

against the grey sky,

a grey-and-white cat sits

on an aggregate rock

to watch us palm

thumbnail-size golden frogs

that share the road with us.

Our feet strike hollows,

a pale green light

lays a wash

on the oak floor,

and the hollies and rowans

through which the huskies run.

At the top, under a pine,

letting the wheeled sled drop,

they lie down,

as did the Reverend Kirk

who vanished

the fourteenth of May 1692,

and who knew

that desire is a harmony

with loss,

and the unseen, like imagined sea or snow,

sustains a dream

so real we may find it.

Thin strips of paper tied to branches,

swing like tongues:

Dear fairies, I wish for my cousin to come alive,

I wish my family would be happy,

I wish you to care for Breaker. He was a great dog.

Wind shoves my back, pushing me to

the stony drop

of the fairy hill.

Mrs. Mary Watson smiles

when I recount

how I crawled on my knees

to the inner wood,

and the warm improbable breath of sled dogs

who ran as if they could smell the Arctic,

their hearts geared to the evidence

of the disappeared.

September

1.

My friends die in September.

They talk of grammatical structures,

and then they begin to sew new clothes.

There are two sides to a pause:

you would think they would remember—

like sunlight on water or an empty house.

I dream I’m hanging from a porthole:

when the ship veers,

I am flung out—

if I can’t hold on, I will die.

Those who have died find new life.

Their eyes touch my hands,

but they have no strength.

They don’t know that the ship turned sharply;

they don’t know about open portholes.

I am on one side of a caesura:

my feet are wet I am so tired.

You would think they would recall

that all lost causes

end in September.

2.

I was glad it was over.

I remembered my father

sawing boards in his workshop.

I recalled the faithfulness of the bee

all summer: the hive,

the honey,

the last bee dance

on the windowsill.

October I

Perhaps it was autumn:

there was rain,

the door slammed;

the postman prowled

in a black rubber cape;

dark fell: we waited,

but it was daylight

when the pup hobbled home.

Our father said he was hit by a car—

and the street wore chrome

and a cruel eye.

That night I found the car,

wrenched the wheel from the driver,

killed him…

(And the moon

slipped under the granite roots

of islands,

lit them

like samples

of carpet snagged

on the seabed,

and

I named the colours—

as if they could be caught

skinking up a stairway

to a bright room.)

October II

Above the hearth,

before the shelves holding three books,

a small cupboard

is sketched in air—

only her eyes can open it.

It holds the spirits,

but on Saturday night

they come out.

They scent the room,

they trail through the debris

of hearts,

they examine the dead.

Her brother knocks

on their shared wall

at midnight.

He seems to say he is alive;

however, he may appear

in a room with parents,

on the walk to school,

or as he hunches his neck

over homework.

He seems to say remember that I am alive,

if I forget.

She opens the cupboard door again

just in case

there is anything else,

and there is.

November I

In her dream, while she is fainting from cold,

the child imagines a blackboard.

She draws a house, trees, a path, sunshine.

She is inside the house

eating pancakes.

She plays the piano,

sits on a beige carpet touching the lamp cord

softly to the socket.

Around her is a blanket of noise:

not the wind, not Lucifer filling her hollow bones

but the hiss of a swan,

its wings trembling fabulous air.

November II

The child shut in the cupboard

whispers the secrets of her life

to the coats. Their skirts bell,

their heavy folds remove her head

from her body.

When she is brave enough,

she tries the door—how many times

can she bear to find it locked?

Grit from boots and shoes

on her bare thighs,

her arms hug her knees:

do not feel sorry for her—

each coat has a voice

and two arms

with which to love her.

December

In December “every form that you see

has its original in the Divine world.”

Death is of no consequence,

because there is eternity.

I bend my head to drink.

Timeless water drips from

my lips. It is no substitute,

it does not remember intelligence or faith,

it cannot recall you to me—you who have finished

with this world.

Pass into the deep, if you must,

so that the one drop which is yourself

may become a sea:

but do not drown,

put on your shoes,

set out as if to visit me.

Midnight

for Michael

There was snow thick as silver coins,

there was the silence

of broken windows.

The street was troubled

with the heels of the dead,

their broad calves

and trembling knees.

Their open mouths

swallowed our breath,

their wet hands touched my belly:

“Not here,” I said,

and put down my suitcase.

The street stopped its wail

of wrongs,

the dead watched you kiss me,

take out the map,

say, “I’m sorry, I’ ll make it right.”

They were pressed so close

I felt their ragged heartbeats,

the swoon of their longing

to be alive

and not dead

in the abandoned streets

in the dark below Sokolovska station

after midnight.

I saw the snow slide

from their black galoshes,

I saw the mud of the sewers

from which they’d climbed;

I was decades late,

but I had come

on the last train

from Vienna

to the city

at midnight.

I can still see the torn paper

of the snow,

feel the V of the roadway underfoot—

no one loved,

but rats fucked

on drainpipes,

on twisted bed frames,

in the wrenched doorways.

We climbed toward a light:

the dead clutched at my long coat,

my scarf, my heavy suitcase.

Their fingers tucked

into my buttonholes, they pulled,

but you held my hand

all the way to Sokolovska.

The soldier who came

could not help,

but the woman with him said,

“Help will come,

no harm will befall you,

it’s Christmas night.”