LAMENT
“My mouth is stretched –
A soundless wail of anguish
For the sorrows of the world
An eye into hell
In the corner of my room
Cry out your lamentations
Prostrate yourselves
And weep, and weep, and weep.”
I wrote this poem long ago, but I am revisiting it now for Ukraine. What’s happening there is inconceivable.
The last one, and perhaps the one that hurts the most; my younger sister and one of my best friends ever. Thank you for reading these poems; For me, May is time set aside for remembrance.
FRANCES
Here I will rest
My ashes falling
Into swirls of bog-brown water
In Spring perhaps
The river quiet
And the birds gone mad
My ghost will hover –
A shape in powdered white
Casting chills on my attendants
Willows hang their leaves
Across the rush of water
Such an airy, fragile green
And I think of you –
Your airy, fragile spirit
Gone out of turn before me
Our childhood memories
All lop-sided now
A pulse of anger yet –
Why aren’t you here!
You should be here!
The mystery of your absence
Plagues me
I kneel beside your grave
Bend low to sense your soul
Breathe in the smell of earth.
I wrote this poem for my mother some years before she died. She was 91 when she died and had had a long, happy life. This poem celebrates her light heart.
I remember the rustle
Of the red, exotic petticoat
The pick of a parcel
From America
Delight crackled in her hair
Exploded in a sudden flush
On her alabaster skin
The lighthouse sweep and beam
Of her glad eyes
Lit us all, haloed the room
Where we stood in a row
To admire
Long left that room, that house
The woman has gathered her years
Carefully, tucked them primly away
Scented and folded neatly
Facing the rest
With a lifted chin
A grin and a new hat
The glow of the red petticoat
About her still.
May is a lovely month, with lilacs and hawthorn in bloom, and buttercups and other wild flowers blooming in abundance. But for me, it is a lonely month. Three of my immediate family are gone, father, mother and sister. I rarely remember the anniversaries of their deaths, but as two of their birthdays were in May, I think of them every day and try to have a quiet time to think and remember. This poem is for my father, the first to go.
Grey church humped in dusk
We huddle, linked
Wispy rain-curled fringes
Cold fingers
Avoid the avid glances
Of the neighbours
Here is the hearse
The priest in white, hand aloft
Accustomed to the rites
Calls him Gerard – but
His name was Jeremiah
Strange cousins
Twice and thrice removed
Clamour to shake hands
And kiss
Anticipating whiskey
He’d have hated this.
I hear the river
rushing to the sea
onwards always,
splashing over hidden rocks
and weirs,
foaming down the falls.
I tread the river path,
smell the warming earth
and grass. Wild flowers
compete with lilac’s
nodding heads and
sweetest hawthorn
These things which Oscar mourned,
shut away from light and air,
more precious in his mind
than freedom.
I think I posted this poem before, but I am moved to repeat it. So much unhappiness and absolute misery in various parts of the world – nothing to do with Covid, just people mistreating other people. Why do we do this? And it has always been the way of humans.
My mouth is stretched –
A soundless wail of anguish
For the sorrows of the world
An eye into hell
In the corner of my room
Cry out your lamentations
Prostrate yourselves
And weep, and weep, and weep.
My mouth is stretched –
A soundless wail of anguish
For the sorrows of the world
An eye into hell
In the corner of my room
Cry out your lamentations
Prostrate yourselves
And weep, and weep, and weep.
I called you Peter
And you rocked the earth
My church is full of stones
I called you Fire
And you consumed me
My mouth is choked with ashes
I called you Truth
And handed you a sword
How often I am pierced
And pierced again
Old scars produce new blood
The letting leaves me
Desolate and grieving
The cycles of my life
Revolving endlessly.
So now I know and
Must accept my fate
The sear of ice is
Burning in my breast
I have tried to quench it
With the gasping taste
Of whiskey
With new distractions
I have tried to warm
My blood
Suicide wouldn’t suit me
I fear the gaping hole
Of hell
But ah, to be old and
Mindless
My wretched mouth
All gums and grins
The ice dissolved at last
In drools and dribbles.
I wear your absence
Like a heavy coat
How pale the day
I never thought
That it would be so hard
To root you out
But I will not regret
The desolation
Of these desert days
The shock of separation
From where my spirit
Lay so easy
Life’s a bugger
But I will grab
it by the ears
And shake it till it screams
Ecstatic.
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