PAPER PATTERNS
ANGELA TOPPING
Belfast Lapwing
PAPER PATTERNS
ANGELA TOPPING
Belfast LAPWING
First Published by Lapwing Publications c/o 1, Ballysillan Drive Belfast BT14 8HQ lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com www.lapwingpoetry.com Copyright Š Angela Topping 2012 All rights reserved The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Since before 1632 The Greig sept of the MacGregor Clan Has been printing and binding books
Lapwing Publications are printed at Kestrel Print Unit 1, Spectrum Centre Shankill Road Belfast BT13 3AA 028 90 319211 E:kestrelprint@btconnect.com Hand-bound in Belfast at the Winepress Set in Aldine 721 BT
ISBN 978-1-909252-03-5
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Are due to the editors of the publications in which some of these poems first appeared. Books: Still Life edited by Emma Rees (Chester University Press 2010), Wenlock Poetry Festival Anthology (Ellingham Press 2011 and 2012), Soul Feathers edited by Goodyear and Morgan (Indigo Dreams 2011), Split Screen edited by Andy Jackson (Red Squirrel Press, forthcoming). Robin Hood Book edited by Alan Morrison and Angela Topping (Caparison 2012) Poems have also appeared in the following journals and ezines: Agenda, Beautiful Scruffiness, Dray, Endymion, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Advent Calendar, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Scotland, The Interpreter’s House, The Recusant, Urban District Writers. An extract from ‘An Athlete’s Dream’ appeared on the National Poetry Day poem cards in 2011. A line from ‘Games’ was part of a patchwork poem created by Andy Jackson for National Poetry Day 2011. ‘Regrets’ was shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Competition 2011. ‘The Lightfoot Letters’ sequence was featured in a joint exhibition with artwork by Maria Walker, in summer 2011 at The Brindley, Runcorn. Some of the poems first appeared in a chapbook published by Erbacce, which also included most of the long lost letters which inspired the artwork and poems. The sequence ‘Catching On’ includes ten poems published under that name in a Rack Press pamphlet (2011) and are here united with the six poems for Matt Simpson included in the chapbook I Sing of Bricks (Salt Modern Voices 2011) Cover Art by Maria Walker, with embroidered words from ‘Paper Patterns’.
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR Solo Poetry Collections: Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (Stride 1988 and 1989) The Fiddle: New and Selected Poems (Stride 1999) The Way We Came (bluechrome 2007) The New Generation (Salt 2010) for children I Sing of Bricks chapbook (Salt 2011) Catching On (Rack Press 2011) The Lightfoot Letters (Erbacce 2011) Kids Stuff (Erbacce 2011) for children Critical Works: Focus on Spies by Michael Frayn (Greenwich Exchange 2008) Focus on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (Greenwich Exchange 2009) Focus on Selected Poems by John Clare – Everyman Edition (Greenwich Exchange forthcoming) Editor: The Least Thing (Stride 1989) Foreword by George Szirtes Making Connections, A Festschrift for Matt Simpson (Stride 1996) Co-author GCSE English Literature for OCR Student Book OUP 2010)
and Teacher Book (2010) OCR GCSE Poetry Anthology Student Book (OUP2011)
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CONTENTS
AN ATHLETE’S DREAM: A MODERN MYTH . . . . . THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE GYPSY CAMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BATHING ON THE TITANIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SHAWSHANK SURVIVOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WISH LIST FOR A BEACH HUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ENAMELLED BOXES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LONDON TRANSPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HORSES, FALLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SHARM EL SHEIK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TRAPPED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LIVERPUDLIANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
THE LIGHTFOOT LETTERS
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ON FIRST HEARING OF THE LETTERS . . . . . TOMORROW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HEIRLOOMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FATHER, SKATING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VISITING GRANDAD II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OUR WILLIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BIRTHDAY SIXPENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NOTE: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 31
MONOCHROME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAPER PATTERNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DUKE’S CLOUGH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DOCTOR LOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BRASENOSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SALVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
32 33 34 35 36 37
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CATCHING ON
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CATCHING ON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LEARNING THE LINGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DURHAM JANUARY 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LAST SWIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HOSPITAL VISITING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HEARING THE NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BYPASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THIRD TIME UNLUCKY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NO PHOTOGRAPH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ROSEMARY CHAPEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SEVERANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BROKEN CHORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A PRIVATE CEREMONY AT OTTERSPOOL PROM THE POET’S HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . READING IN FORMBY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEEPING FAITH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UNLEARNING THE ROUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . RELINQUISHING BERLIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SICKLE MOON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SOIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BLACKBERRY TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE KITCHEN MAID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KUMQUATS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LEMON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . POMEGRANATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE BOILING OF THE JAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SUGAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FOUR WAYS TO LOVE CAULIFLOWER . . . . . . . . . A GARDEN FOR EMILY DICKINSON . . . . . . . . . . . A GARDEN FOR HARPER LEE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SHAM .............................. SPARROW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GOODBYE SNOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DELAMERE FOREST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FEBRUARY WALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ABOVE AND BELOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MOORLAND VOICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . COMPLAINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
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57 58 59 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 73 74 75 76 77 78 80
THIS COULD BE CATHY SPEAKING . . . . . . . . . . . REGRETS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WINNING/LOSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ESME ANSWERS BACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SNATCHES OF SONGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BIRTHDAY INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FLYING FREE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IN KEW GARDENS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
For my husband, Dave.
If tears for sorrow start at will They’re comforts in their kind. John Clare The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and to tell what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one. John Ruskin Poetry is the music of the consciousness. Don Paterson
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Angela Topping
AN ATHLETE’S DREAM: A MODERN MYTH Nike: Greek Goddess of Victory
The gun said Go and then there was running; the rush of air zooming past the grip of the running shoes on the track. I forgot the others, kept on running, could not stop, round and round the track until I rose high in air, while below medals were suspended around necks, rousing music struck up. I ran circling higher and higher above earth, leaping into blue space. I did not tire. My shoes wore out, the rags of my clothes fell away from me. My orbit is far from earth. My name is Nike.
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Paper Patterns
THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH When I was first hatched, I did not know where I wanted to make my home. Like a bronze dragon I darkened the sky, disturbed the air with my great heavy wings. I grew tired of flying, of watching my own shadow. I liked it best up north, green windhaunted hills where once the factories and pits had burned the atmosphere. I could hear the echo of their mighty gongs. And so, my wings outspread, I settled here for good. My metal is tested by wind and rain, struck into rough music, singing of industry, fading memories, as the world moves on. Cars flash past below me, thousands a day see my rusted bulk, know where I stand.
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THE GYPSY CAMP ‘tis thus they live – a picture to the place John Clare
Nights were magic then, once barefoot kids were tucked in jazzy blankets fast asleep. The dark belonged to us. We’d leave the fire where grannies knitted and old tales were spun, to dare each other into woods, run wild; up trees the girls would thunder us with acorns then jump down to be kissed, while old men spat into the fire, supped their home-made ale. It was best when Irish cousins came, the back-home accent of the roaring boys, who played their fiddling tiddley-eye tunes. By day we worked with horses, went to school, but nights were ours for play. The villagers said we were scroungers, didn’t pay our way. But money had changed hands to get this place. One autumn day the bailiffs called. We fought to stay. Then ‘dozers came, my mum was bashed and all our pitches wrecked, our friends forced off. I doubt I’ll ever see my girl again. There’s just a few of us left now, to squat in ruined camp and hope for snow to come and cover up this mess of burned-out ground.
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Paper Patterns
BATHING ON THE TITANIC Brass taps spurt a salty waterfall drawn from the ocean below, piped warm as blood, from heated tanks. Health-giving baths with iodine and cobalt, as boasted on posters, urged by doctors. Rinse off with fresh water from a bucket standing to attention behind the bath. Such luxuries of scented soap and cloudy towels while the valet lays out dinner clothes. After brandy and cigars, a game of cards. until it’s time to take another bath in salt water, this time taken with ice.
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SHAWSHANK SURVIVOR Into this stench of fear and piss, the guilty come: only bars divide. Screws and convicts both the same. They read what’s written on the walls and in men’s eyes. There are so many ways to leave. Be kicked to death on your first night, serve forty years before parole spits you out like phlegm back to a world you cannot recognise. To save one man, an unseen cloak: his human pride, and sense to make the best of things, to keep inside the spark of hope, the grain of truth the skill that others only lack. His cell a planetful of thoughts: the library stock a freedom march, his chess set carved from rocks a game of war, the wall behind a pin-up girl a hole in time. He changes tack knows law for what it is, a fake, and sets about the life he wants to make. An aria to feed their minds, to fill the tawdry air with soaring joy, to cock a snook at warden crook, a plan of years to gain his prize: a beach, a boat, the sun upon his back.
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WISH LIST FOR A BEACH HUT A raven’s feather and a seagull’s cry, a speckled pebble found that morning a piece of blue glass smoothed by the sea keeping me company at my desk. A creaking wicker chair, draped with knitted blanket, soothing as in the scrubbed morning light words appear in my notebook. On the wooden shelf in painted tins is the last day I spent with my poet friend, a 1959 cycle ride with my father, the first day I held each daughter in my arms. The teapot is never empty. Hot dark tea in a striped mug warms against salt breeze. My guitar leans in the corner waiting until the poem is found.
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Angela Topping
ENAMELLED BOXES for Pascale Petit Harold Raby Collection, Manchester City Art Gallery
Unlike eggs, their treasure, is not within. These are inside out. Look at this frog, self-satisfied, its jewels gleaming in the spotlight; this speckled hare, ears back couched upon a mound of green; head of Neptune, empty of brains as though someone had sliced his skull at the temple, but being immortal, he’d survived to wear this hat of painted shells, sea serpents and fish, whatever the painter’s wild dreams brought. Then there’s the mottos: Though absent not forgotten; I prize the gift because I love the giver. Raby, bank manager, came home each night from a colourless day, to these gaudy dainties he’d braved bombs to buy, bonbonnières and patch boxes, to bring him levity and joy.
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Paper Patterns
LONDON TRANSPORT First the river: slow barges on royal progress Tudor kings and queens blaze roses on a June day. Now clippers and pleasure boats take to the current, slipping easily under bridges ancient and new: Blackfriars, Millennium, Westminster, Waterloo. Electric trains whisk by above our heads and below ground, crammed with passengers. Steam trains are locked in memory but must have filled London skies with white breath: Hungerford, Clapham, Wandsworth, Bexleyheath. And beyond into the stratosphere, planes dive above clouds, over the wrinkled river, London set out like a model city in all its domes and glass, Shakespeare’s Globe a wedding ring, unicycle Eye: Helsinki, Gothenburg, Cologne, Dubai.
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HORSES, FALLING Bayeux 2011
Each steed is different, needle-drawn, couched in muted shades, their noble heads shackled with bridles, chain-stitched threads. On cotton track, they canter like horses at races until they come to Saxon ‘Beecher’s Brook’, when, pulled up short, they tumble to the ground, heads down, rears up: colliding, knotting, twisting, while needlewomen sew each snort and whinny, catching the details of their falling in unlikely curves. The dying horses claim their place in history, through this tapestry, as though their hoof beats rang through yards of cloth.
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Paper Patterns
SHARM EL SHEIK As far from home as we have ever been, we gaze at strange stars in a desert sky, cold distant suns which long ago have died. As if assembled here on seventh day an alien world appears in wilderness a crazy Lego Egypt built on sand where palm trees tantalise in jewelled gowns; Annubis, bastardised and sulking, sits outside casinos with sarcophagi; a price attached to everything except the landscape: bluest sea and jagged rocks, magnificent against a dusty land; below the turquoise sea fish cities thrive. The Call to Prayer reverberates a sigh.
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TRAPPED For John Lennon
Trapped, not in back entries behind terraces but in posh Mendips with eyefuls of stained glass, respectability in every spike of creamy porridge pebbledash. Everything neat and scrubbed, dishcloth draped over taps. Trapped, by an upright aunt, whose expectations weighed heavy as iron slabs of kitchen scales. High grades for the bright boy, good job with pension, work hard now for success later on. Homework to be done. Trapped by fans, wa wa wa and love me do. Where were the good years, writing songs with Paul? The years fooling at school, flunking O levels on purpose, trying Mimi’s temper? Fighting for the right to grow up, wear white suits, love Yoko. Trapped in the end by a fan’s insanity, proffering an exit marked by a gun, red blooms on a white life, imagine. How far he was from home, lost Liverpool boy! Trapped by our love, locked in legend, sealed on discs.
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LIVERPUDLIANS That sense of rootedness, a pull so strong, it drags them home to die. Their loves speak out in caustic wit, the salt the Mersey’s given them. They take no crap from anyone. I’ve tried to put down roots, grasp on to something, ached to be part of that welcoming city. I too was born on Mersey’s shore, but not in Liverpool. My ancestors fetched up there from another world. My great-grandfather, Patrick Lawler, stepped off the boat bemused, hopeful, ready to tote his few belongings, his farmer’s skill, as far as it took to find work. I should be a scouser, if not for his sour luck. Got the knock-back so many times, his thicket of red hair proclaiming his origins before the lilting brogue gave him away, he left Liverpool behind, walking upriver to a nowhere town with other failures.
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THE LIGHTFOOT LETTERS
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ON FIRST HEARING OF THE LETTERS for Maria Walker, textile artist
First the artwork with the letters printed behind photographs of a different family, enlarged, framed in a gallery, palimpsests. Words from the letters are embroidered on a corset, traced on shoes, painted on spoons. A bundle of letters, the artist explains, bought for the stamps but too good to cut up. From Widnes (my home town) a family called Lightfoot (my maiden name). Not necessarily my family, but may be. Then the names Frances, Ada, Dorothy: coincidence too great. We stand awed, making webs intricate as old lace, beautiful as buttons, miraculous as bread. She has already used my words to embroider on her art, but I was the follower. The letters came before me into her work. They have travelled through time and space to find me, tied with pink ribbon, bringing me my father, lost so long ago.
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TOMORROW Tomorrow the letters will begin to give up their secrets, fold my strange family history into envelopes. Tomorrow I will hold them in hands that shake and ache to touch paper my father, grandfather, grandmother and who knows else, wrote upon, sealed with their saliva, my DNA. Documents from a time before girlfriends, rivalries, adult complications when all my father cared about was skating, comics and football before the schisms and silences. Tomorrow I will see the life he lived hold it for myself, know his words.
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HEIRLOOMS For this family no precious objects, collections to be loaned to museums or passed down as heirlooms. Scarce enough money sometimes to put food on the scrubbed table or buy corduroys for the boys to cover their bare bums from trousers worn too thin for decency. Yet on the surprising tide some treasure is brought to shore. What strange waves brought to me this package of well-thumbed letters? Paper is worn to silk, envelopes torn by eager fingers when they first arrived bringing news from home. Some are written on paper torn from schoolbooks, or written on the backs of things no longer needed, no notepaper to speak of in the house.
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Angela Topping
ADA (1882-1933)
How I begin to know you through these letters. In 1923 she was away from home, your girlie, leaving behind three clumsy boys and two baby daughters to plague you. That winter was so harsh the wind blew the pictures off the wall and your cough gusted through the house, your chest creaked like old floorboards and you wrote of everything you did, saving scraps of gossip about secret weddings to piece together with the oppression of household chores, the perils of ironing with a badly-cut thumb, the days it took the washing to dry and little Dorothy going worse naughty, smashing all the plates, while namesake Ada screamed and yowled because she did not know like older ones, how to write a letter. The house must have quietened at night while the boys laboured over their letters; my father’s carefully neat, Vincent’s scrawled, not yet master of his pen, and you’re exhausted but no power can stop you writing page after page in your carefully flowing script. For doesn’t a mother cat cry when a kitty is lost. Ada, grandmother, how alike we are two mothers looking out for our dear ones.
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FATHER, SKATING Lean into the wind, father, let skates speed you across frozen pond in this harsh winter of 1923 when pits are thick with ice and all you care about is learning to go on two skates, those home-made blades carrying you in a hard-won glide into a back spin as you show off your new found skills. No one taught you or held your hand hauled you up when you fell time after time, except yourself. Enjoy your triumph, Dad, for all too soon your childhood will crash to its ending. For now you’re just a boy buying a clockwork engine with carefully totted-up tips from your after-school job. All too soon you’ll be a man at twelve years old, handing pay over to keep family fed:
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your mother ill in bed, your father given up to drink, the young ones arguing. Skate on, enjoy the free flow as your blades whistle on ice. It’s not yet time to go home.
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VISITING GRANDAD II I’ve never been upstairs before I’ve never come in at the front or been brought by mum and yet our visit has been prearranged. The tall man who is grandfather and of whom I am afraid is lying in a high brass bed while women fuss and mother stands diminished. Like a glinting skull below his bed a chamber pot appalls. All I can think about is what might lurk within. I’m held up to kiss his warm and briny cheek, to say good bye to a man I’ve never really known or touched before today. My daddy’s dad, though something’s wrong I’m never told. He must have asked for me, the littlest one. My kiss brought him back to life again.
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Angela Topping
OUR WILLIE The family authority on everything, he’s quoted like a sage and even subverted by his Mam and Dad. A card, a wag, he amuses Frances with epic tales of tooth extraction. A likely youth of eighteen years passionate about the election, forthright in his views. When did he change his name to Uncle Bill, the man I knew? His face a counterfeit of my father’s – the wrong eyes, blue to Dad’s brown. He’s still joking though. He’d call my clarinet a liquorice stick as he quizzed me about school, promised me a metronome in his will.
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BIRTHDAY SIXPENCE Ada, queening it on mother’s bed, posing with her yellow scarf, reads her picture book, replete. Five today, she’s adamant Frannie will be sure to send, all the way from Manchester, her birthday present in the post. She brandishes a fountain pen, brother Vin found in a drawer and wonders what the “prize” will be whenever Peter finds it. The rag doll has been christened in her baby sister’s dress. But best of all, from daddy a sixpence, all her own. She’s keeping it to show big sister: one day Frannie will come home.
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NOTE: The letters were written mostly in the winter of 1923. They came to light when artist Maria Walker purchased them in an antique shop. Five years later she began collaborating with Angela Topping. It came as a surprise to them both that the letter writers were members of Angela’s father’s family.
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MONOCHROME A candid photograph, a moment caught in black and white, nineteen fifty nine, a council house estate interior. A television, first they ever saw, holds two small girls in rapture where they lie, on bellies, heads propped up by hands, enthralled, unaware that they were captured too in spying camera’s eye. Behind them father monitors, one eye on them the other focused on the flickering screen. He has arranged for this newfangled thing and feels some pride in its unveiling day. He never lived to see its colours show. His camera was only monochrome. But in this photograph, the magic gadgets are cutting-edge, brand new, and he is master of the revels, bestowing love.
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PAPER PATTERNS Make me a dress the colour of sky just after a June sunset, or one like that velvet in George Henry Lee’s expensive Christmas window. God love her, she’d try. Her mouth prickled with a metal smile of pins as she unrolled market stall cloth, spread crackling paper patterns. She’d labour on at her Singer, her small feet dancing the two step on the treadle, tunelessly humming, secure in motherly skills. But I failed to measure up, came to dread her home-sewn lumpy seams, gave up romance, took to wearing lumberjack shirts, cut-down jeans.
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DUKE’S CLOUGH Bluebells powder the air, cool and woody, intoxicating as whispered words. Thrushes threaten their neighbours in syllabics. Crass cars tune up through engines’ scales. ‘Come on’, dad says, it’s time to go’. back to the fusty house for Sunday tea. Leaving the copse, walking back to bikes, feet snag on ruts. Glancing behind from here, it’s nothing much, just trees, battered by the motorway. Brambles snatch our slacks, fruitless hooks fragmenting the track as we climb. The clough is lost to us, a shut eye, closed fist as the bikes’ pedals respond to weight and time.
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DOCTOR LOVE Jon Pertwee as The Third Doctor
Doctor, Doctor, when you first called I was nine. I couldn’t come with you then, still hiding behind daddy, sheltering in his shadow in front of our monochrome set dreaming of Gallifrey, of diving into your kaleidoscope. I was changing like you, renewing all my cells, going through to my third incarnation: a new version of myself with pointed breasts, long hair, a waist. Not nylon slacks but Levi’s, lace and scent. Doctor, Doctor, oh you dandy, velvet smoking jacket, bow ties and leather gloves, you lounge lizard. My mother warned me about men like you. And yet you were the perfect gentleman, like daddy. I watched as you outfaced Silurians, always polite but not afraid to punch when words failed, reverse the polarity and get the hell out of there. I was getting out too: boys, A levels, university. Doctor, Doctor, your world was colour like mine. We watched you in black and white but knowing others could see your green, burgundy and blue as you strutted in galaxies, finding yourself, like me. Daddy’s girl learned to argue, teenstruck and difficult. I had no tardis to travel back to myself. You could have made everything alright again. Where were you? Too busy on missions to call again. Doctor, Doctor, you missed your chance with me. 35
Paper Patterns
BRASENOSE i.m. Gerard Donovan 1954-2012
Mine for one night: a room in college, up a twisting stair, overlooking a street sticky with summer rain. I’m here as teacher, bringing students on a trip. Outside, buses bumble up and down as though this were anywhere. It isn’t. It’s Oxford. Unthinkable for me in the nineteen seventies. Gowned graduates trail helium balloons onto lawns forbidden until now, champagne flutes sing in their hands. The afternoon light kisses them goodbye.
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SALVE I dreamed I saw someone strike you, a shocking slap which lacerated your white neck with a deep welt. I leapt in anger as your eyes shocked with tears, though you are a woman grown. I wiped the blood with soft cloth, delicately dabbed arnica as you winced. It was already staining your skin blue. How can I reach you now with salve? So much simpler when you were close to my arms and healing hands.
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CATCHING ON an elegiac sequence for
MATT SIMPSON
‘A faithful friend is the medicine of life’ Ecclesiastes ‘This man I count on for my deeper self, is dead.’ Matt Simpson
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CATCHING ON There are times - she knows them too (they are banal enough) I’m stumped for what to do or say: Matt Simpson
There are times, he knows them well enough when I feel slighted, snubbed, as when he won’t sit next to me, include me, or share that choirboy cuteness he wows old ladies with, his charm. He’ll sting with bitter words a poem not too cack-handed except he makes it so. A hug would put things right but he won’t relax his arms for me. He leaves me standing, face unkissed. But writes inscriptions in his books pledging ‘love as ever’, phones every week, emails: ‘enjoyed your visit tremendously as always’, dazzles his just-for-me smile.
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LEARNING THE LINGO We are learning the grammar of friendship, significant nouns, imperative verbs, entanglements of complex syntax. Our sentences are demarcated by line breaks and paragraphs. We coin metaphors for the unsaid breathing freedoms of the sea, journeys we have yet to take together and apart. You tot up faults then with a smile give absolution. The declaratives of your doorstep: a warm hug after the dog has finished barging in to jump and lick. We kiss chastely but with all the love we can, for a long time masters of our tongues.
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DURHAM JANUARY 2003 You’re indulging me, I know. Given half a chance you’d go straight to the station for our train although it’s hours too soon. Crossing Palace Green’s unprinted page, our double tracks produce a quatrain on the snow, no other person near. The cathedral’s breath is ice. Bede’s tomb is plain and strange. We cannot stay for long in this ancient place. The gem shop in the square is silent, but for us. Blue lace agate beads the souvenirs I choose. You say they suit me, match my eyes, stolen hours are crystallised in these snowflakes I still cherish fastened round my throat.
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LAST SWIM The rhythms of our swimming match perfectly as we plash from one end of the pool to the other. You’re counting lengths. As usual, I follow in your wake. We’ve done this so many times I’ve grown used to you in swimming trucks, sea-lion goggles; your shy showering afterwards, coyly placing towels. It’s a routine we take comfort in, this slow glide through amniotic waters. There’s barely room for side by side, but we fit together easily. We punctuate our lengths with conversation like line breaks in the watery sonnet of our swim. We have no knowledge of the way this ends.
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HOSPITAL VISITING I trace your steps from hospital car park in warm evening sun impatient to see you. A machine helps me find a path to you through grey shiny corridors, up stairs and over bridges, through protocols and passwords, hand gels to sanctify me, like holy water in church, before I can touch you. I have to ask where you are. The medics have claimed you though I’m allowed to squiggle on to a high stool. We think this is all temporary, that soon we’ll have you home, a new man. We’ve plans for you. You say it’s kind of me to come. As if I could stay away. You know I love you. You introduce me to your favourite nurse, the one with the film star eyes. Tell her ‘This is my friend Ange, a poet too.’ Not a title to be claimed for oneself, but you gave it freely, a last bequest in your final days of life. 44
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HEARING THE NEWS The phone rings at six a.m. It’s Monika and I know. Matt died. Her voice is disbelief. She’s all cried out. I was going to the hospital again tonight to see him in intensive care, all tubified. A week before I’d stood in our school porch and phoned to make certain he’d survived the bypass of his heart. Now it’s all over. I can’t begin to know how to mourn him, what rituals must follow to let him go.
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BYPASS A week to the day since I last saw you; with that terrible wound in your chest, too surrounded by tubes for my arms to reach for you. Now I drive past the hospital listening to ‘The Lark Ascending’, remembering how we locked eyes to talk without words and caress without touch. I stroked and kissed your cool hand and did not want to leave you, looking back from the ward door to blow a kiss. Somewhere you are lying cold, who in life was warm and tender, boyish, full of jests.
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THIRD TIME UNLUCKY The times he cheated death: once as a baby, brought back to life with a sip of brandy, that only child for whom the mother suffered. That time in war when the house was flattened the day after they’d gone to stay with grandma. His father home from sea glimpsed mashed-up trike, splash of red in the rubble - thought the worst. So why not now? The heart grinding to a halt so unexpectedly; no weird coincidence this time, no more miracles, no Lazarus tricks, no resurrection kiss of spirits on the lips.
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NO PHOTOGRAPH Asked for a photograph of us for funeral memory book, I was empty-handed, at a loss. It wasn’t something we’d ever thought to do; now it’s too late. Our togethers were all in words, now suddenly end-stopped. I was your second self, could instinctively put my finger on it when you fretted over poems. The times we shared were quiet ones, not for public view, earnest over fresh coffee in mellow times when I could distract you nicely with poetry. I am the bearer of your words, my hoarded store of years. I will never let you leave me, carry you inside my head. Your voice still buzzes in my ears.
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ROSEMARY CHAPEL A poet dies. Or not. Words He wrote resonate somewhere. Edward Lucie-Smith
There should have been a wake for you, a night of howling, whisky-soaked farewells, a chance to steal a lock of your white hair, recite your tender poems about death. Not these jumbled words in Rosemary Chapel where death is made polite and funeral guests are silent in stiff suits, while some of us, your dearest ones, imprison sobs in throats. And there’s your photograph, with teasing eyes, always game for laughs, or some daft pun. It can’t be right that you have gone and yet the phone is quiet now, the emails stopped. Your image watches over us, as if waiting for the punch line, the reveal when you’ll jump out and giggle ‘gotcha’. But no. You stubbornly insist on being dead. Now the wake begins. We have to believe you’re never coming back, except in dreams or in the echo of a melody you loved and finished black words on a white page.
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SEVERANCE I don’t understand what death is that can split us apart like a knife parting the green flesh of a plum. We never allowed anything to come between us before. There was no reason for us ever to quarrel. So why allow this cruel death to sunder us? I have to find a way back to connect with you again, you who have passed through the skin of the night into my pores, you who permeate the page I write on, always looking over my shoulder for the truth you hope to read there.
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BROKEN CHORDS My things disowning me, just waiting for purchasers to collect. Matt Simpson
Plastic bags of unsold CDs in your living room: I’m invited round to choose, fill two boxes, slide them in alphabetically with my own. Impossible to tell which ones were yours without that familiar handwriting on the spine upright in schooled neatness, recording details. This disc’s edge still carries your fingerprints was last played by you for private consolation or to set a joyous path for some friend. You’re still introducing me to composers I didn’t know, pieces unheard before. I’m lost in a melody of effervescent woodwind when suddenly mid-phrase it crashes to an end the disc corrupted and ground to silence.
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A PRIVATE CEREMONY AT OTTERSPOOL PROM On fathers’ day, they lowered his ashes into the Mersey, to swirl in brine so he could finally come home. He’d always reproached himself for choosing university and books over salty decks and seagull wisdom. At the touch of a button, he would command Baroque music to be poured into the whelk of the ear. Sea-shanties and concertos harmonise in Mersey foam as he moves out to sea, finally fulfilling his father’s hopes, who himself is landlocked, stuffed into the family plot against his will.
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THE POET’S HOUSE The house he lived in has been sold. Expect some gentle haunting. The ghosts of a marriage in hoarded plastic bags, whispering books packed on study shelves. Surely the floorboards still remember the warm reverberations of music he loved: Vaughan-Williams for sweetness, Beethoven for bad moods, Wagner when angry and Schubert Lieder for love. The wallpaper holds shreds of conversations talking poetry for hours because it mattered. On the wall drawings friends had made, a terracotta hare to remind him of Cowper a windowsill full of model ships never sailed but unfurled to sing him gull songs, honour his father. The crossword’s half done, the chess set laid out but uncontested. Every time I remember him, my own ghost hovers for a moment in the space I used to sit, Matt expansive in his favourite chair conjuring me a welcome with hugs and coffee. Lucky the new owners, inheriting so much love crammed under roof tiles. Bring in the new furniture, set free the piano listen out for poems writing themselves onto air, syllables chuntering in the dark.
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READING IN FORMBY: 2006 A summer’s night in Formby Matt reading from In Deep giving poems like talismans against the coming dark. Afterwards, Billy crushes a lemon from the bar, filling the darkening road with light and scent. Lemon groves blossomed in the narrow street as Billy shared the zest stinging both his hands. This was Billy’s poem giving something back. The five of us were quiet, poems still filling minds. Swirling in the Mersey Matt’s ashes are long gone. I wish for him groves of lemon and for us, consolation.
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KEEPING FAITH also i.m. Michael Murphy
Very well, old friend, I will keep faith with you. On our last walk together you showed me the long grass where you scattered seeds for Michael not knowing whether they would grow or fail. Those seeds had not been in the ground a month when you yourself had parted with your breath and we were left bereft without your love. You’d made promises to look for him as sparks of flowers under summer skies where specks of larks ascend and zephyrs blow. On such a day as that I will arise and take the path again that we two shared to see the weeds that hopefully you sowed, and scour the skies for one high-flying bird.
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UNLEARNING THE ROUTE Just the kind of day I’d drive this same road, to visit you: fields glowing in one last effort before winter’s silence. All along the route I’d hold the thought of you as on my radio a lark ascended or some horn concerto hurried me with its melody. In Boundary Drive you’d be listening checking the window until at last I was there, parking neatly outside in my usual place, walking up the drive with my clutch of poems.
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RELINQUISHING BERLIN For Monika
Picture the woman on the station platform, wind pasting woollen coat to her legs; at her feet a small checked suitcase. The train she waits for will take her back to Berlin and into a future that could once have happened: her name known all over Germany and beyond, to Hollywood, her face gleaming in magazines, long legs in their seamed stockings insured for thousands, her red hair a trademark, famous, glamorous. This is the future she relinquished to marry the poet she met at language classes, how she was tempted to Liverpool, how she was wrapped in his love until his heart gave out, leaving her stranded in a strange country. No-one she loved is left in Berlin. Her suitcase is full of poems, her arms full of grandchildren.
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SICKLE MOON The doctor with the bluest eyes, an exact match for his uniform, tells me the dark news tenderly. Hours later, my brother drags on air, his tube removed, faded eyes raised like a supplicating saint. I have to leave in the early hours. He cannot hear my goodbyes. Roads are quiet in June darkness. The moon’s a cruel scythe, bright as a spotlight, unwavering. A rabbit runs from the hedge into the car’s path. The small life is annihilated, swifter than my brother, who labours on fourteen hours more. He always took the quietest road, giving in so easily. I never thought he’d fight so hard to live.
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SOIL i.m. R.B.
Remembering his hands, farmer’s hands dirt engrained so deep washing could not counteract its claim on every pore and crease. Huge hands, gentle milking cows, earnest in tendering pen to page. By day he worked his father’s farm, happy with a small wage working for his future keeping it all going. By night his wife absorbed their TV while he sat at table in the world he was writing.
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Remembering his hands, farmer’s hands, their strength, his life. Until the day his father sold up, broke the promises unspoken but understood. Discontent grew fast as nettles in his marriage, his children’s future changed along with their new address. Not knowing what to do, it’s easy to imagine those strong hands fixing the rope to swing him into one of his own tales which lie buried in notebooks, his slow careful writing, pen gripped in soil-kissed hands.
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BLACKBERRY TIME These polished fruits, ripened in the sun, glint white highlights on the tablecloth. Picked for you, dad, though time divides us. You are gone into the who knows where, but stay here in my cells. Right now I’m a child again, stealing a berry from the top of the dangling basket on the handlebars of your homeward-moving bike, as I sit on my crossbar seat, safe in the circle of your arms. Step further back: you and brother Vin snapped blackberrying in this old photograph, you high among layering brambles, intent on taking something home, Vincent posing ruefully below, the pair of you threadbare. Look at these berries, plump with purple juice that stains like blood, ripe for pies and wine and jam. All too soon the crawling bugs will surface. Your body was sealed and purified in flame. Dark-eyed and bittersweet, renewing, these blackberries declare your name
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THE KITCHEN MAID I’m meant to use this recipe book cook’s just thrust at me. She demands I make angel cake for the master’s little uns because she’s too busy faffing around with lark’s tongues in aspic for the party. I’ve never baked before, usually peeling spuds and carrots is my lot. You should see the writing in this book! I struggle to read as it is but here hundreds of different hands have scribbled printed, copperplated and smudged their way through what they have to share. No order anywhere. Here’s a diet drink followed by a remedy for the toothache, the proper way to cut up a pig and roast its head. At last, here’s how to make a cake no mention of angels, and cook’s bawling shift yerself girl, have ye not started yet? Take the weight of an egg (surely that depends) in butter, sugar, flour. I am whisking, stirring this silky mixture when cook comes back, smiling. Jelly must have turned out well. Very good, girl. I’ll make a cook of you yet. Maybe one day, I’ll get to add my own blotted handwriting to this book. Maybe one day I’ll be like her, mistress of a kitchen when I am grown. Imagine that.
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KUMQUATS Bitter pockets of sunblaze, you shock the tongue. Each one is a poem lying in wait. Sweet skin, harsh flesh. You’re teasers, sly as snakes, welcoming us in with familiar guise before biting back, shocking taste-buds with your orange fire, egg-shaped bombs.
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LEMON Even the word is cool. Some might think you bitter but even though I shudder your clean taste bewitches, makes tongues dance. You are a lantern filled with yellow candlelight. Your skin, faintly scented is soothing balm to the weary. To slice through your belly Is to release the sharp tang of your zest. Eager for release it spurts up to perfume the air. The blonde light made into taste contained in the flask of your skin.
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POMEGRANATE For Jan Dean
Time, you thief, who love to get sweets into your book Leigh Hunt
Five pointed star, my pentacle, how I would lift your jewels from their case, one by one on the pin’s point, before I found a better way. Now I bite into your leather with greedy teeth, devouring your ruby firmaments. Time’s a thief and so am I, seizing everything I can. Time enough for picking out your treasures one by one when days begin to bleed into each other like washed watercolour sunsets. Even Persephone could not resist your glowing fairy-lights. I garner your seeds for my journey, on clean parchment draw my magical five pointed star.
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THE BOILING OF THE JAM I simmer essences of summer in this broad pan, their juices loaded with sugar, bubbles rise glassy like hot marbles. I’m capturing balmy days against the chill to come pouring dark stickiness into warmed jars to give away or keep and eat, share and shore-up against absences to come. It’s alchemy, this melting of base summer into ruby, emerald. It’s husbandry too, wanting to preserve.
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SUGAR A recipe sure to dry tears: white bread, yellow butter, sifting of sugar folded over and taken outside to eat in the gutter superciliously watching the game still going on in the echoing square. Taunts fly off without touching Because you can say I don’t care: I’ve got a sugar butty. More tangible than a mother’s kiss and brisk ‘never mind’, a sign, a kiss you could show off that someone cared enough, as you bite into the sticky grit and feel the sugar rush. Even now, in this grown up world when the game goes on without you and you’re pushed into dusty gutter there’s always that cup of tea to set everything to rights.
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FOUR WAYS TO LOVE CAULIFLOWER I Miniature ivory city of secret passages and hidden caves, finding a way to breach your defences is the hardest thing. II Swathed in cool green silk bouquet of foamy white flowers fitting gift for a cook. III Biting into a floret stroked raw into salt, the mouthful is crisper than any apple. IV You wear your dress lightly as you recline upon the plate draped in muslin, embracing your lover, white-suited Stilton.
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A GARDEN FOR EMILY DICKINSON There’s a bird on the walk. The flowers are all white: white roses, white lilies, white blossom on the trees. The small lawn is trimmed precisely within an inch of its roots. The path shines, a parting finely dividing hair. A frog is croaking ‘nobody’. A line of white dresses wafts decorously, showing no sign that last night was a wild one.
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A GARDEN FOR HARPER LEE Of course there’s a mockingbird. It’s been singing for fifty years, a different song each time. There’s an old oak tree for shelter, The earth is cool underneath, the trunk too thick for embracing. There’s a path to the house door lined with purple and yellow primroses The ragged lawn’s daisy-dotted. No one plays in the tree-house now Jem and Scout grew up, moved out. Magnolias are banned like sad memories. Arthur Radley loves this garden though he never walks there. He can only peer from windows. He misses the children but keeps close his memories in his mind still watches their play.
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SHAM She named me Estella, to make me cold, distant as the stars, trapped like them within lost time. I was to be her knife. My building blocks were sharp clumps of icing from the wedding cake. Her loose shoe a boat I sailed across carpets with a spider crew. At first I missed my mother, her sad songs, but came to know her fickle, weak. My new mamma sang lullabies of hate. I rarely saw her face behind the veil, clinging cobweb to her vellum skin, but those eyes could bore holes in marble. She brought me boys to practise on, to train me up as avatar. I feared nothing, snapped my words like cracking bones. Wanted them to cry and run away and shrink from me. Pip was a fool. I tried to shake him off. He clung like a drowning man. He didn’t understand where I was coming from. He should have looked at her and known. She made me a fairy child, a belle dame
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who could waltz and smile, wear elegance like armour, and turn a pretty phrase, but she kept things from me, secrets a changeling child could not suspect. And now she’s gone, consumed by smoke, Her Cinderella rats deserted her. And I am here alone, my purpose blunt, among the ruins of the life she made.
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SPARROW Passer, deliciae meae puellae – Catullus
When wind and earth joined together to make the sparrow, they set its toy heart flickering, its small feet clicking. The breast was made from speckled foam, the wings painted with colours left over from other creations: burnt sienna, cafe latte, sludge. Although the bird’s beauty was doubtful, it could weave in and out of hedges, eaves and thatch. The voice was nothing special: a chirrup like a giggle fastened in its throat like a comedy brooch. Wind and earth baptised their child. The first fairy godmother named it passer, the second gave it joy, the third the greatest gift of all: to be convivial. The sparrow was a great success, beloved of a poet’s paramour, able to hop into human habitations unafraid.
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GOODBYE SNOW Like a dangerous friend, the snow went, leaving everywhere shabby and dirty. His going is a relief but also a sadness. No more will nights be bright as the moon uses the garden for a mirror, no more will birds watch eagerly when nut holders are filled. Snow left behind no gifts for us despite the overstayed welcome, the trouble caused. Snow’s like that. A winter visitor, magical at first but soon the jokes become tedious, the appetite insatiable, the whisky bottle emptying as Snow slakes his thirst. Then overnight Snow has slung his hook and driven off blowing a few kisses in the coldest places.
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DELAMERE FOREST Pinned in my mind, the night you left me alone in the forest. Walking in winter: sculptural trees, muddy paths. Pale winter sun slips into the abyss of a December night. Faster than leaf fall, engulfed in darkness, mere a distant glimmer. You ran for the car to rescue us, take us home to warmth and light. A curl of memory for me, something else for you to forget.
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FEBRUARY WALK We’ve been lucky with the weather we both agree, stepping out together, you and me. The woods are rich with sunlight on the heather. We’ve been lucky to know each other We both agree, like sister and brother you and me. Our friendship is gold as the light making silk of the river.
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ABOVE AND BELOW Cobblestone daisies rise from stubborn roots and tongued leaves bright stars against the ribbed slate night. An ant creeps along the herringbone road while overhead green shanks support milkwhite openness, yellow pinheads of pollen.
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MOORLAND VOICES Bog Asphodel They say we hurt sheep. It’s all lies. How could we harm any living thing? Look at our starry crowns, glowing like monstrances in the sun’s halo. Heather knitted from flecked yarn the moor’s thick jumper cuddles undulating earth Marsh Violet We are the butterfly’s chocolate box. Our petals are delicate as old lavender lace. But just look at our royal purple veins! Bird’sfoot Trefoil Part the grass to uncover us. We are not large. Close to the ground we find shelter for our gold. Our three footed claw-like seed pods splash orange.
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Soft Rush We were there, when Cap O’Rushes needed a disguise. We were there when poor people needed rush lights. We were there too when Meg Merriles wanted to make gifts for the cottagers and wove us into mats. We will always be there even if all the lights burn out and the world wants us again. Sheep’s Fescue We are feather, we are silver, We ride on the light. We ask little water, a comical sight. The gatekeeper butterfly loves us for sure and we keep her kitchen on the wide moor.
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COMPLAINT Why did you make life so short? You rob us of our strongest loves. You made us love too much. Why did you make life so long? Some lose their grasp of memory, You made us far too frail. If you mould our race again you need to think about the flaws. You made us too expendable. Start again from clay. Give us our Eden undisturbed. Then go away.
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THIS COULD BE CATHY SPEAKING This is the film of our lives: sequences of upbeat pop, the two of us laughing and running in a blur of camera work before the tear-swept ending. A quietly successful film shown later at film clubs, and made in black and white. The film was based on a novel written by a Bronte, the style passionate but restrained; the reader hoping against the author’s will that fate would give a chance. It is a long and difficult novel, set for A level. As it is, we are flesh and blood, destined to be ash and bone. No-one will mark our story and even we are unaware of its genre. Only know, being human, living it is our only option. We must go on with it.
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REGRETS He likes to see the faint blue smoke stream into darkness as he says farewell. He relishes the paper’s acceptance of flame: a mystic kiss from tender whispered match. He stuffs in remnants of his wedding day, a girl’s name: he loved but never told, the guitar he never bought or learned to play. He rolls the strands in slivers of his skin then lights up, dips them into his cupped hand, raises them soft to his lips and pulls them in. Each sweet regret sings through the soft drum of his lungs, licks into cells before he expels, sends it into the night to salute the moon. He wonders how many times he will do this before he can give it up, before they have all left and he can enjoy a quiet mind and his dull life.
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WINNING/LOSING In Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, plastic dots determined whether you would climb or slide, and draughts where rules came out of nowhere, the wooden discs stacked up, your win denied. Monopoly meant scrabbling to buy and speculate, carve out a space for cash and rank to grow like greedy plants, to stand revealed as master of your race. Moves were studied, learned from books, until no-one would take you on at war game chess. And so you moved to cards, to Solo Whist. Hearts was not your lucky suit, confess. Till finally you set down like a dare one undeniable misère ouvert.
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ESME ANSWERS BACK What time do you call this? 9 o’clock, what do you? Singing’s his god! You’d moan if dad was in a pub! You’re like your father, determined. I’m glad I take after somebody. What she had for lunch is filed in a locked-down part of her brain but at ninety she remembers too well every smart retort she ever made. Her sister Megan would wring her hands: be careful what you say, keep your mouth shut. Megan had no smart answers when death came round. She folded her knitting, put on her coat, went peaceably. Esme keeps death at the sword point of her wit. She’ll not give in without a fight. She knows the answers.
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SNATCHES OF SONGS When I am old and frail as paper, I want the benediction of scented soap, warm water, a white flannel. If I cannot wash myself, I shall not mind who bathes me, so long as their hands are gentle and I am allowed to sing in my tub. The songs I will sing are snatches, tunes I knew from childhood, in the warm arms of my mother, whose tuneless singing lulled me to sleep. Or songs I learned in school choirs, drilled into perfect performances by some long-skirted Miss. and hymns from church, choruses from folk clubs. I shall sing through my store of memories as the soap washes the years away and I am a baby, bathed in a papier-mâchÊ bowl in front of a Lilac Avenue fire.
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GAMES This body they tend, a wrinkled hanging thing they try not to see, is not me. I am a woman who grew three babies in the secret places, who fed them and watched them grow. These skinny legs and arms, freckled with age and rumpled, remember the way it felt to run in long grass on a summer’s day, to serve a tennis ball crisp and sharp into the sun’s eye, to part for a lover. He left me years ago: death called and he went willingly enough, no thought for the left behind. I longed to go too but this game was strange. He hid where I could not follow. I’ve learned to love the little things: this weekly bath, fresh cotton sheets, a pot of tea, steaming strong. I dream I am small again, a little girl; I sing the songs my mother lulled me with when I could not sleep.
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BIRTHDAY INSTRUCTIONS Wash away the excesses of the week in the innocence of soap suds. Treat the brandy glasses with care. Fold up the wrapping paper. to be used again. Like good citizens we watch the carbon footprint. Phone our daughters in their different towns. Check your parents are coping, in their muddle of days and times and not remembering. Our birthday cards can stay up for now: yours in one room, mine another. Both of us are drifting into mid-fifties, know that, like playground bullies, years are closing in on us. We will look back upon this time as halcyon. Already death has us staked out, has started subtracting from our store, takes pot shots at us from the shrubbery.
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FLYING FREE I am travelling into the future, afraid and dizzy as all things shift. I am a snowflake, melting as I fall. I look at my sister and brother to see the family face grown old. One brother has already flown free. No-one told me how fast years run. There are no brakes I can apply as my decades rush headlong. I loved our lime tree, its little leaves, lemon and light green, always whispering, but dad couldn’t save it from our neighbour. I am learning to live for the moment, now, to press the essence of each day to memory, to live beside you, my faithful lover. The world stretches out its hand to us. Come with me into the future. When the time comes, I want us to be ready.
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IN KEW GARDENS Start at the pagoda, as good a place as any – there must be a beginning somehow. The garden is peopled with trees in gregarious knots shadowing the land, neighbourly and kind. Past the Japanese gateway, that’s not for now. Travel grass paths to bluebells: their illiterate heads, empty of clappers, are bowed in the shade. There is my father, stooping to help my seven-year old self to pick properly, gliding fingers down green stems, armfuls for mum’s green glass vases. They will not keep. I do not wave to them but tiptoe on. From oak and ash forest, leaves falling as I go, pass to a lake. Waterlilies open delicate hands, implore me to stay; loveheart colours, waltz time pastels entice, but I am implacable. There’s Holly Walk, dark glassy prickled leaves are Christmasses long gone. Too green, I cannot stay despite the robin with his cheeky song, syllables clear as springs. The journey must continue through bamboo groves to glasshouses stuffed with rarest plants. A fiddleback fern unrolls before my eyes, a red tulip streaked with black glistens like shot silk. The spells they cast are only memories which may never resurface in my dreams. The smell of good earth, damp with life, is the common language of all gardens.
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For a while, mum walks beside me, chattering, performing her old trick of twisting off a plant sprig, defying all the signs. She will grow this on at home. My time in this garden cannot last, and I have yet to see the coconut-ice of magnolia, stately palms waving under glass. The Temple of Arethusa is closed to me. I’ve been spendthrift with my hours. Soon gates will be locked. Have I lingered at the wrong places or rushed headlong, following too many memories? When did I find there was no returning?
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L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S
ANGELA TOPPING
Angela Topping unravels the threads that hold families and friends together, exposing all the frailties, joys and tenacity of love, in these strong, spare poems. In this, her sixth collection, she offers poems in a wide range of voices and forms, three sequences and a firm rootedness in the concrete and the real. Topping was born in 1954 in Cheshire to working class parents with Irish ancestry. She was educated in Liverpool and has worked as a teacher. Her work has been widely published, in such journals as London Magazine, Honest Ulsterman, Other Poetry, Critical Survey, The Reader and many others. C Reading Angela Topping’s poetry, I’m reminded of Robert Frost. Topping’s writing is clever, but cleverness is never made a virtue for its own sake; it’s always a means to an end, which is to reach the heart. Mark Burnhope Angela Topping’s poems are deceptively simple, singing modern lullabies to the bottomless hole left in hearts by death and absence, by the failure of speech and love. Her work examines hurt without flinching, in a poetry that does not prevaricate or make pretty patterns with language where only straight-talking will answer. Jane Holland Angela Topping’s poems are exploratory, imaginative and tensile. Her acute ear and observant eye enliven every subject she touches. Ian Parks I Sing of Bricks chapbook (Salt 2011): Angela Topping has the knack of making the reader see things anew, of reinventing lyrical forms, and of disarming sceptics like myself with the ‘unexpected love’ which occurs throughout this carefully ordered and original work. Rupert Loydell The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore - so it has been written indicative of hope. Printed by Kestrel Print Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland
ISBN 978-1-909252-03-5
£10.00