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N I N E P O E M S
Rosemary Canavan
Haiku Crab Apples The War Dusk Nude We, turned aside to sleep Prisoner The Island Serpula Lachrymans
Some of these poems have previously been published in my collection, The Island, published by Story Line Press Inc, Three Oaks Farm, Brownsville, OR 97327.
Haiku
summer river
a whole gold-brown world
under water
Crab Apples
There used to be skylarks, he said:
we would lie
on the flat of our backs
in summer, to listen,
and in the hedgerows,
crab apples.
But the fifty acre field
grows no hedgerows where
birds might flutter and perch:
no corncrake rasps
to break the still air
above the sileaged grass,
and the skylark's song
no longer tumbles
to the fields and woods
round Ringabella.
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The War
Hush. I will not tell them
you are growing furiously, silently,
from the stump they cut last year,
your stalks healing bare concrete and pipes.
In the grey city every green spear
is a guerrilla fighter hissing freedom.
Your blades thrust out dangerously.
Everywhere you erect leafy receptors
to power your takeover.
You never rest. If we rest
you are up and away.
Our apparent victory is temporary,
in the end you will defeat us.
Showers fuel you
as you crawl, bladed, armed,
over rooftops, across dusty terrain,
firing sudden pollen, an intermittent
but deadly bombardment of seed.
Bees drone overhead, your secret agents.
For you birds swiftly drop grenades.
We are deaf to your troop movements,
do not know from which corner
your next attack will be,
yet we tear you from your roots,
shrivel you with lethal fluid,
and you appear to melt away, leaving
tangible corpses by the roadside
then come at us from another angle:
the force is with your ragged troops;
I will defect to your side,
leave my garden to wilderness,
don a bandolier of seed, with my breath
blow dandelion to the four winds,
smear moss spores over concrete,
scatter seed hidden in my pockets;
from each pod green shoots will grow.
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Dusk
It is only at
dusk honey-
suckle breathes
sweet breath: at
dusk cattle rear
and charge in
darkening fields:
at dusk trees
blur, become
unreal, as song
from thrushes,
blackbirds arrows
through air:
at dusk wind
drops, dew falls,
moths stir.
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Nude
I should like to paint you
so you should neveragain say
your body shamed you, paint you
Bacchus, perhaps, lit in Italian sun,
a grape dipped in your suckling mouth;
or Dionysius, trailing ecstasy, for
Dionysius never aped the muscle man,
and who would wish
to bed the grimmer Hercules?
Or paused in a clearing,
I would paint you
brown-skinned, slant-eyed,
the god Pan.
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We, turned aside to sleep
Sometimes you walk where I cannot follow you
We had walked into the garden
the big man and I
when suddenly
he was in my bed
wearing only navy-blue underpants
His great bear-body
was hot and comforting
until you knocked at the door
and I tried to shake him off
but he was so heavy, so heavy -
and he did not seem to hear
when I pleaded with him
I had nothing to wear
so pulled on a short jacket
it did not cover one of my breasts
and I had to leave the caravan
where we stayed
and cross a field
which was sky-blue studded with pools of concrete
where boys were playing hurley
(whether they saw my one exposed breast
I do not know)
to reach the house where you and the children
were making breakfast
On the veranda a hag with snow-white hair accosted me
could she use my oven to bake buns for the hurley team?
I was angry at her intrusion
but she knew what I had been doing
so it was difficult to refuse
I do not know if I ever gained the kitchen
But I was walking in the fast lane
of a four-lane highway
the road was broad, deserted
except for a woman in a small car
she waited until I had walked by
and then I was turning, turning, scraping inside
a great womb-shaped piece of white clay
beating a fork around to make it perfectly smooth
the outside was ribbed
I touched it with a finger
and it was searing, white-hot from the fork's friction
at my touch it collapsed to a little low teapot
covered with fine coils of white clay like curls
it was no bigger than the palm of my hand
Sometimes where I walk you cannot follow me.
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Prisoner
Class after class
in shaded monochrome
he painted
not the flowers, but
the shadow of roses.
The Island
28th May, 1848 ...we came to anchor ...within five hundred yards of Spike Island - a rueful looking place, where I could discern, crowning the hill, the long walls of the prison, and a battery commanding the harbour.
May 29th: In this court, nothing is to be see but the high walls and the blue sky. And beyond these walls is the beautiful bay lying in the bosom of its soft green hills. If they keep me here for many years I will forget what the fair outer world is like. Gazing on grey stones, my eyes will grow stony.
John Mitchell Jail Journal
I The Journey
First
there is a web of bridges and islands
round like breasts, like
a child's drawing of hills:
from here the island is beautiful,
you cannot see
that the shape on the summit
is a stone bastion.
When the boat bore me
first to the pier, the sea
was glowing unearthly blue,
the island glittered,
it was crystal, wind-scoured
in the blinding morning sun,
a place to see mysteries,
Inis Pic of the monks.
It seemed less blessed later,
under a grey, troubled sky, as swans
clustered by the lee of the island
and the dark swell broke high;
or past Haulbowline, mist-hung
with the far shore gone,
and buoy struts at low water
outposts of a bleak, forgotten land:
or by the ruined fortifications
of the old magazine, where
a ghostly redcoat might leap
to challenge, not knowing
the passage of time.
Sometimes the place
fills with ghosts, crowding
upon me, as the living leave,
until the soft thrudd of the launch's engines
wakes me to walk to the pier's edge.
II Embarked
Her wake is a sure arabesque
as she pulls past Cobh and across
to the long finger of quay.
Stilts rise, gaunt, barnacled,
greenish at low tide
as she bangs the bottom step
and we jump, smartly,
before she swings out again.
Beyond the beach of brick and sea-worn shard
the blind cottages of the old village:
street corners deserted, clean,
bear testimony to conversation
long since snatched by the wind;
and in neglected gardens
bushes by the old walls
this spring are filled with birdsong:
singing to the incarcerated
they torture, and still exhilarate.
But our steps pull free, up,
as the bay revealed under us
is blue as a kingfisher's wing.
And soaring our spirits skim
the margin of wooded hills,
miniature as a magic lantern scene.
Until suddenly between two grass banks
the gates loom: we are let in.
III The Enclosure
Inside these walls, you cannot see the world.
Save at the edges, the great enclosure
is bare of buildings, a moon-bleak
surface of cinders and mud
that dries to yellow dust
in the spring air; yet
despite shadows of unease,
the shuttered form of the old jail,
or the burned-out block,
today is workmanlike, spellings
are learned, business is sorted out,
a kind of reality is touched
as the sun falls upon
the geranium in the English room.
IV To Travel Beyond the Confines
But in Dublin the wind cuts sharp,
on this ground exploring is dangerous:
search even innocently, and you might
scrape flesh, touch bone.
Behind the grime-streaked stone
that towers above the house backs,
lime-cauled bodies of heroes burn,
and sounding above
the engines at rush hour
the cries of the lost women -
slashing, slashing -
and blood trickling
under the cell door.
She is not like the others:
withdrawn, she contemplates
an open book as morning breaks,
lighting the chipped plaster
patterning her living space.
Yet, with only time
and the monthly sign
to mark the passing of her womanhood,
how much more
could she, undestroyed, contain?
- not much more -
so given that one chance, she let them
mount her behind the sacristy; was it
joy worth waiting for, to feel
that brief shudder of pleasure
before the grey walls closed her in again?
Her body was fresh and sweet still, cream
against the dark triangle,
but her face had a greyed look,
and scored deep under her eyes
shadows sank by the cheek bone.
V The Lazarhouse
So what's to be done
to stop him fucking
when he's let out
of the unit for prisoners
with Aids antibodies?
Condoms are disallowed
by the authorities
and the girls
not knowing
don't say no.
VI The Female Ward
And in the female section
even the copybooks are bleeding,
blotted and blotched on the yellow covers
with tears, with browned blood
(those pools, are they edged orange, are they magenta?)
For the women, not content
to bleed with the moon
slash and hack
at the whitish flesh
till stones redden under the flood
- where's her copybook?
- Miss, her copybook
is all covered in blood...
VII The Class
In the hushed room
we form a circle, to read
that remembering pigeons, he tells
how the bird, released from the boy's hand
soars - real far -
out of the cage on the smoky roof.
It is afternoon. Locked
in the foetid air we fight
sleep and dream of release;
and when the evening train
pulls at last between rounded hills
I would press my head against them, for peace.
VIII Leaving
Evening, on the island.
As I reach the quay,
walking on wet seaweed
that the last storm has thrown
carelessly, along the stone
(brown pods, popped
by my boots) I stare
under the rain-pocked surface
of the sea, where clouds
mirrored in grey billow
like ectoplasm, and a goat's
head, then a bull
grotesque as the Minotaur
peer briefly, horridly: then
disappear, and I search
desperately over grey water
for the launch to rescue me.
IX To View From a Distance
Seaward of Cork
islands at evening time are glass-green
stones inlaid upon sapphire, upon aquamarine,
and great ships move in arcs around headlands
gliding and silent on the estuary:
and the island is enclosed, secret,
gleaming softly in slanting light.
Island of the blessed? These poor
inherit space in a stone dormitory, seek
oblivion in a needle or drink,
with only the grave to end
the tortured wandering of a damaged mind.
On the island there is a graveyard
where the graves are numbered,
featureless. They never left:
but as I leave
from far away it becomes
only an island,
shimmering in the white of early morning,
lovely at evening time.
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Serpula Lachrymans
(the dry rot fungus, from Latin: 'the weeping serpent')
Like a soft, furred creature
snuffling along floorboards
it secretly flourishes:
will its spores
penetrate my fingertips
if I reach out long enough
to insulate me
from sorrows, frustration?
Its pale wool
shot with sulphur, with
rust-red, and fungi
peering like faces
from corners, look to
that dissolution we all
come to, lying by
Morpheus till each particle
flies from us
to rejoin the greater part,
will this
shroud us from sorrow
like your padded web?
Listen.
It pads along ceiling joists,
nuzzling firm grain
to char, crumble
until where wood was,
powder remains;
leaching towers to
shells staring skyward
through empty windows,
stones bare that were
dressed in silks and
ornamented for great men,
all bow
to this little creeping thing,
a knob on a thread,
remorselessly
weaving and twisting
with such energy
it must cry
"there is no death,
death's dead:"
for if decay
lives so, if
when one creature fails,
another grows, if all things
feed others, how
could we resent
shape-shifting
when our words
feed other heads,
our children
grow their children
so
let us dance
towards death,
sparks shivering
from our fingertips, blazing
mad glory like comets.
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