Part 24 (2/2)

The Stone Verdict

When he stands in the judgement place

With his stick in his hand and the broad hat Still on his head, maimed by self-doubt And an old disdain of sweet talk and excuses, It will be no justice if the sentence is blabbed out.

He will expect more than words in the ultimate court He relied on through a lifetime's speechlessness.

Let it be like the judgement of Hermes, G.o.d of the stone heap, where the stones were verdicts Cast solidly at his feet, piling up around him Until he stood waist-deep in the cairn Of his absolution: maybe a gate-pillar Or a tumbled wallstead where hogweed earths the silence Somebody will break at last to say, 'Here His spirit lingers,' and will have said too much.

The Spoonbait

So a new similitude is given us

And we say: The soul may be compared Unto a spoonbait that a child discovers Beneath the sliding lid of a pencil case, Glimpsed once and imagined for a lifetime Risen and free and spooling out of nowhere A shooting star going back up the darkness.

It flees him and it burns him all at once Like the single drop that Dives implored Falling and falling into a great gulf.

Then exit, the polished helmet of a hero Laid out amids.h.i.+ps above scudding water.

Exit, alternatively, a toy of light Reeled through him upstream, snagging on nothing.

Clearances in memoriam M.K.H., 19111984

She taught me what her uncle once taught her:

How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right.

The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught me between the hammer and the block To face the music. Teach me now to listen, To strike it rich behind the linear black.

I.

A cobble thrown a hundred years ago Keeps coming at me, the first stone Aimed at a great-grandmother's turncoat brow.

The pony jerks and the riot's on.

She's crouched low in the trap Running the gauntlet that first Sunday Down the brae to Ma.s.s at a panicked gallop.

He whips on through the town to cries of 'Lundy!'

Call her 'The Convert'. 'The Exogamous Bride'.

Anyhow, it is a genre piece Inherited on my mother's side And mine to dispose with now she's gone.

Instead of silver and Victorian lace, The exonerating, exonerated stone.

II.

Polished linoleum shone there. Bra.s.s taps shone.

The china cups were very white and big An unchipped set with sugar bowl and jug.

The kettle whistled. Sandwich and tea scone Were present and correct. In case it run, The b.u.t.ter must be kept out of the sun.

And don't be dropping crumbs. Don't tilt your chair.

Don't reach. Don't point. Don't make noise when you stir.

It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead, Where grandfather is rising from his place With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head To welcome a bewildered homing daughter Before she even knocks. 'What's this? What's this?'

And they sit down in the s.h.i.+ning room together.

III.

When all the others were away at Ma.s.s I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

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