Part 1 (2/2)
There were no windows, just two narrow shafts Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts All summer when the zinc burned like an oven.
A scythe's edge, a clean spade, a pitchfork's p.r.o.ngs: Slowly bright objects formed when you went in.
Then you felt cobwebs clogging up your lungs And scuttled fast into the sunlit yard And into nights when bats were on the wing Over the rafters of sleep, where bright eyes stared From piles of grain in corners, fierce, unblinking.
The dark gulfed like a roof-s.p.a.ce. I was chaff To be pecked up when birds shot through the air-slits.
I lay face-down to shun the fear above.
The two-lugged sacks moved in like great blind rats.
Blackberry-Picking.
for Philip Hobsbaum.
Late August, given heavy rain and sun.
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and l.u.s.t for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots Where briars scratched and wet gra.s.s bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn p.r.i.c.ks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We h.o.a.rded the fresh berries in the byre But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Churning Day
A thick crust, coa.r.s.e-grained as limestone rough-cast,
hardened gradually on top of the four crocks that stood, large pottery bombs, in the small pantry.
After the hot brewery of gland, cud and udder, cool porous earthenware fermented the b.u.t.termilk for churning day, when the hooped churn was scoured with plumping kettles and the busy scrubber echoed daintily on the seasoned wood.
It stood then, purified, on the flagged kitchen floor.
Out came the four crocks, spilled their heavy lip of cream, their white insides, into the sterile churn.
The staff, like a great whiskey-muddler fas.h.i.+oned in deal wood, was plunged in, the lid fitted.
My mother took first turn, set up rhythms that slugged and thumped for hours. Arms ached.
Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered with flabby milk.
Where finally gold flecks began to dance. They poured hot water then, sterilized a birchwood bowl and little corrugated b.u.t.ter-spades.
Their short stroke quickened, suddenly a yellow curd was weighting the churned-up white, heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight that they fished, dripping, in a wide tin strainer, heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl.
The house would stink long after churning day, acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks were ranged along the wall again, the b.u.t.ter in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves.
And in the house we moved with gravid ease, our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns, the plash and gurgle of the sour-breathed milk, the pat and slap of small spades on wet lumps.
Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck Of reins, the sweating team turned round And back into the land. His eye Narrowed and angled at the ground, Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hobnailed wake, Fell sometimes on the polished sod; Sometimes he rode me on his back Dipping and rising to his plod.
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