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What is there and other poems

Margaret Wilmot

A Hot January

First publication: December 2006

http://badosa.com/p169

A FEW DRY STALKS

Not inside the sanctuary, nor even when the slope

curved round and I saw the temple ringed with peaks,

which at that early hour seemed to be lifting it.

Nor did the conventional wisdom obtain, that

letting go is when we see; when we turn away,

give up trying to grasp the obscure meaning.

The mysterious revelation — of what? Thirty years

later I still ask myself in high fields of a certain tilt —

took place before, on the climb from Andritsena.

A shepherd pointed out a shortcut up some rocks.

I came out into an empty field, where a few dry stalks trembled.

Everything was opening, as if light were being torn.

A RED RASPBERRY FOR GEORGINA

I place a red raspberry on your lips.

The spare hospice light flutters moth-near.

“Life is all pervasive in the atmosphere.”

Yesterday an astronomer referred to the organic nature

of cosmic dust. I chew my toast to pulp in the obscure faith

that these tiniest particles will transcend our skins

and nourish you. The universe fascinated you; black holes.

Now you lie cocooned in impenetrable sleep. I long

for the pink tip of a tongue to bud, your lips to open

and press round the plump succulence, savour

the fullness of each red bead; its berry blood to spurt

light and rich across your palate. I long —

DEPARTURE LOUNGE: SHADES RICHER

The toddler’s browny face lights up;

wiry black curls dance all over his head.

“Daddy! Look!” He tugs a trouser leg.

Huge beyond the plate glass, only the nose

and shoulder visible, our plane has loomed

into place; its arrival alters the light.

Blond as sunshine, his father sweeps the child

into a wide embrace. I imagine the black mother,

shining huge in the man’s life; his delight in

her darkness, in the mystery even of the revealed.

I imagine him loving how she takes his light

and gives it back shades richer.

IN THE BUS

for Maggie

Maggie never crosses her legs.

Art Class makes you look at people newly.

She could fill a canvas as The Farmer’s Wife on

a Stepladder, hands huge as spoons about her bird.

The language beside me burbles, plucks; it is Luganda.

I know because I ask the demoiselle in

the cross-folded head-cloth, because I’m thinking

of Maggie, and her Nigerian niece, and legs,

and how Picasso paints women. But now

a slab of plant fills the wide bus window.

We wait. Angled steel raises a shank,

high; higher; poises. Light glints.

LIFE WITHOUT BOYS

Blankets untumbled, animals in a calm rank across

the bunk, their room is still. No shoes spill

around the door. The floor stays relatively clean.

Bats, racquets lean in a single place.

We eat in peace, and, indeed, have run out of bread —

and the world did not end. Life without boys.

Less urgent our days, but lacking in savour, as if

savour were born in dust and dirt and noise.

The piano too is still; no one plays “The Merry Peasant”

or “The Trout.” A breeze billows the curtains,

wafts through the silent room, and out.

Sunlight falls into the Lego box, and stays.

MEDEA AND THE HORSES

Think of Medea’s passion as she looked out the palace

and saw horses placidly grazing. It was then —

as she breathed in their pungent, sociable heat —

that the dark cloud of her lamentation burst. To see

how the curved vault of sky held them in its wide embrace;

to see their noses nuzzle deep into spring pasture, cropping

sweet grass, and hear their strong teeth rip and tear, and know

the earth itself planted entirely firm, stratum upon rich stratum, down

through roots and tombs and mines... No, this was unbearable.

For the scent of horses in the still noon lies beyond magic.

It tells us all is well. Home is here near these warm flanks;

each smallest shift in weight implies the world is a solid house.

RORSCHACH ROTHKO

Each photo spreads into unexpected shapes, ink

on the mind’s soft plane; unbidden attracts

lateral memories, questions; evokes thoughts.

How do we simply look? See the young man

in his natty suit, whistling as he makes his way

down a San Francisco street in the late Thirties?

Not think of the scruffy years, or regret the changes

along the Embarcadero half a century on.

Just see what lies within the frame?

Rothko took his own measures: expanding the canvas until

its size envelopes you, you are inside the moment.

The young man is moving toward you, Now.

WAITING FOR ROSEBUDS

High on St. Paul’s Mr. Eliot waited for fires,

or, better, nothing. No bombers. No ash on

an old man’s sleeve. While some years after

the Blitz, Vladimir and Estragon waited for Godot,

or anything. Once a craftsman with all the world still

to happen fashioned his expectation into a zebu with

lifted throat and a perky angle to the horns. It’s aeons

since youth and blood were warmer, and the day

was not enough; I’d fall asleep hoping for ‘a good dream.’

Was I Silaja’s age? Who last summer gave me “a cloth

for wrapping watermelons,” the smile on her dark face

a dazzling slice. In the tube today a guitar plucked wait, wait.

WHAT IS THERE

The dark at the edge of the box of light

is a relief. We don’t have to look, can focus on

John Hurt, who tentatively peers into the edge

of what isn’t there before returning to the yellow bulb

centre-stage. I think of the neighbour looking like

a bundle of rags in her chair; the night she spent

failing to get a leg into the second knicker-hole.

At 6 a.m. she gave up. “I’d shot my bolt.”

What tape would she choose? Krapp’s banana droops.

He rewinds. Listens. Despite the embarrassment

of life, of oneself, the crap under the light-bulb,

there are moments — they move him, move in him still.

WORDS LIKE FOUNTAINS

i.m. la zia Maria

With la zia Maria it was all dark and light.

Poems. Mountain songs. The terrible story

of fleeing to the Dolomites... It was the war,

and only one twin in her arms when the bomb fell.

After an evening at Lincoln Center, thrilled with

the Chagalls, the chandeliers, the sparkle of it all,

she sat in the brown chair, hands dipping,

lifting, and her words too rose and fell in fountains.

Her death cast nets of silence. Until the day

old tunes put down long lines and brought up words

from the dark pool. I fished for phrases as I drove,

and whole songs came, and then the singing.