Part 31 (1/2)

The teacher let some big boys out at two

To gather sticks (In scanty nineteen forty-six) And even though I never was supposed to I wanted out as well. One afternoon I raised my hand With those free livers off the land And found myself at large an hour too soon Under a raggedy, hurrying sky On the road home.

If ever I felt 'heaven's dome'

Was what I lived beneath, it was that day I lied myself into my own desire, Displaced, afraid At what I'd dared to be ahead Of time. The black spot where the gypsies' fire Had charred the roadside gra.s.s, the rags that blew On the stripped hedge, The cold it put me all on edge.

Escape-joy died, one magpie rose and flew And left an emptiness I walked on through To come down to earth In my parents' gaze, the whole question of worth, And their knowledge that loved on without ado.

(1994).

from THE SPIRIT LEVEL (1995)

The Rain Stick

for Beth and Rand

Up-end the rain stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known To listen for. In a cactus stalk Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe Being played by water, you shake it again lightly And diminuendo runs through all its scales Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves, Then subtle little wets off gra.s.s and daisies; Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next Is undiminished for having happened once, Twice, ten, a thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

Mint

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles

Growing wild at the gable of the house Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles: Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise And newness in the back yard of our life As if something callow yet tenacious Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday Mornings when the mint was cut and loved: My last things will be first things slipping from me.

Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless Like inmates liberated in that yard.

Like the disregarded ones we turned against Because we'd failed them by our disregard.

A Sofa in the Forties

All of us on the sofa in a line, kneeling

Behind each other, eldest down to youngest, Elbows going like pistons, for this was a train And between the jamb-wall and the bedroom door Our speed and distance were inestimable.

First we shunted, then we whistled, then Somebody collected the invisible For tickets and very gravely punched it As carnage after carnage under us Moved faster, chooka-chook, the sofa legs Went giddy and the unreachable ones Far out on the kitchen floor began to wave.

Ghost-train? Death-gondola? The carved, curved ends, Black leatherette and ornate gauntness of it Made it seem the sofa had achieved Flotation. Its castors on tiptoe, Its braid and fluent backboard gave it airs Of superannuated pageantry: When visitors endured it, straight-backed, When it stood off in its own remoteness, When the insufficient toys appeared on it On Christmas mornings, it held out as itself, Potentially heavenbound, earthbound for sure, Among things that might add up or let you down.

We entered history and ignorance Under the wireless shelf. Yippee-i-ay, Sang 'The Riders of the Range'. HERE IS THE NEWS, Said the absolute speaker. Between him and us A great gulf was fixed where p.r.o.nunciation Reigned tyrannically. The aerial wire Swept from a treetop down in through a hole Bored in the windowframe. When it moved in wind, The sway of language and its furtherings Swept and swayed in us like nets in water Or the abstract, lonely curve of distant trains As we entered history and ignorance.

We occupied our seats with all our might, Fit for the uncomfortableness.

Constancy was its own reward already.

Out in front, on the big upholstered arm, Somebody craned to the side, driver or Fireman, wiping his dry brow with the air Of one who had run the gauntlet. We were The last thing on his mind, it seemed; we sensed A tunnel coming up where we'd pour through Like unlit carriages through fields at night, Our only job to sit, eyes straight ahead, And be transported and make engine noise.

Keeping Going for Hugh

The piper coming from far away is you

With a whitewash brush for a sporran Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow, Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting With laughter, but keeping the drone going on Interminably, between catches of breath.