Poems

Three poems from Girl (2024)

You Girl

When the angel comes for you
you’re on your own
always on your own
in some enclosed space

a bedroom    garden
corner of a public library.
Reading     charging your phone
brushing your hair in the mirror.

Stillness     then a trembling of the light.
You could have said No.
Is this what you wanted for your life
relationship      soaking in like oil in wood

all that dark involvement
without knowing why?
You were alone you thought.
A bud on a winter stalk.

Innocence. And behind
in green distance     some vision
or is it memory      of another angel
chasing you out of a garden with a sword.

But you don’t say no
and there’s a flash
of luminescence      a dove
streaming in through the window

:a flood of real fear
and your heart
in the cowl-neck T-shirt from Primark
suddenly convulsed. But your old life

now seems dry as a stubbed
cigarette. You are a chalice
plugged with gold
vibrating to bells only you can hear.

Invisible or Only Just

             for Helen

The thing about being a girl
she said     is you can’t see inside.

That’s part of the mystery.
Look. The camellia has opened

and you still can’t see in.
You’re crinkled

with secrets     a fire opal
caught in search-light.

When My Daughter Discovered Her Feet in the Bath

Both of us in wonderland
learning how to be together
with a new dance going on
in your brain. Neural pathways.
I dreamed of soft green fern
uncurling in a forest. I placed

a plastic basin on the table
filled it with warm water
and plucked you like soft fruit
from your pram. It was all discovery.
For you     for me. You splashed water
on the table like crystal drops  

from the fountain of immortality
gathered by wandering Psyche in a box.
You laughed. You loved baths
and hands were easy
you clutched everything in reach.
But when your feet moved

you stared like an alchemist
whose stone really did turn gold.
What were these objects at the end of things?

You moved one. Replaced it.
I saw you think it through
a connection between what you felt

what you did      and some change in the view.
There was more to this world
there is always more      than you knew.

The Waves on Chios

As when a man who has been dementing for years –
old friends burst into tears
when they see the ruins of his mind
old lovers in despair
look up the rules for Dignitas –

when he dies at last, gently, in deep sleep
and one by one for the rest of us
the memories sweep back,
how he listened, how he believed in dialogue
and held warmth in his heart to the end –

so, looking down from the cliff
I watch the wild Greek ocean-going waves
with their cargo of flotsam and salt
roil around the rocks, fan up in spray, spread their all-
embracing murmur on the shore, and never stop.

From Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth (2014)

Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth

The first day he cut rosewood for the back,
bent sycamore into ribs and made a belly
     of mahogany. Let us go early to the vineyards
     and see if the vines have budded.
The sky was blue over the Jezreel valley
     and the gilt dove shone
above the Church of the Annunciation.
The second day, he carved a camel-bone base
     for the fingerboard.
I sat down under his shadow with delight.

 The third day he made a nut of sandalwood,
and a pick-guard of black cherry.
     He damascened a rose of horn
     with arabesques 
as lustrous as under-leaves of olive beside the sea. 
     I have found him whom my soul loves.
He inlaid the sound-hole with ivory swans,
each pair a valentine of entangled necks,
     and fitted tuning pegs of apricot
to give a good smell when rubbed.

The fourth was a day for cutting
high strings of camel-gut. His left hand
     shall be under my head.
     For the lower course, he twisted copper strings
pale as tarmac under frost. 
     He shall lie all night between my breasts.
The fifth day he laid down varnish.
Our couch is green and the beams of our house
     are cedar and pine. Behind the neck
he put a sign to keep off the Evil Eye.

My beloved is a cluster of camphire
in the vineyards of Engedi
     and I watched him whittle an eagle-feather, a plectrum
     to celebrate the angel of improvisation
     who dwells in clefts on the Nazareth ridge
where love waits. And grows, if you give it time.
Set me as a seal upon your heart.
On the sixth day the soldiers came
     for his genetic code.
We have no record of what happened.

 

I was queuing at the checkpoint to Galilee.
I sought him and found him not.
     He’d have been in his open-air workshop -
     I called but he gave me no answer -  
the self-same spot
     where Jesus stood when He came from Capernaum
to teach in synagogue, and townsfolk tried
to throw Him from the rocks. Until the day break
     and shadows flee away
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh.

 

The seventh day we set his wounded hands
around the splinters. Come with me from Lebanon,
     my spouse, look from the top
    of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens.
On the eighth there were no more days.
I took a class in carpentry and put away the bridal rug.
We started over
with a child’s ’oud  bought on eBay.
     He was a virtuoso of the ’oud
and his banner over me was love.

In publications