Street Musicians

In a dark mood, cropped,
I miss the scent of angels

forgetting they are street musicians
drawing notes from whatever instrument's
to hand,

forgetting they wrestle in caves to win.

The Artist Bursts In, Drawing His Knives

“Angel of Death,” woodcut on paper, Leonard Baskin



He cuts the feathers that are the shoulders of the angel of death,
the mouth that is the closed cave of the angel of death,
the nostrils that are the oubliettes
stuffed with black air that has our scent.

The angel of death has our torso.
He greets evil black to black wherever it has torn us,
shouldering in wherever flesh lies.

No shock for us behind that closed door:
the uncowering artist has stared him down,
exposing the jet hand that is the shadow
of the cock of the angel of death, showing us
how those feathers have taken the veins of our lungs
and filled themselves with our air.

At our threshold the fierce, naked,
blessed artist imprints himself, making mortal
those square cheeks, those netted balls,
that white throat, those thighs.
He is our agent. The angel's eyes roll back.

Looking Up

O, crystal sky of cold wind
and winking strings of stars,
eternity above the city street.
We cluster by our temporary hearths;
years fly, walls break, logs fall to grey.
We are diamonds, diamonds.

Unexpected Harvest

One part of moving to a new continent is getting to know the strange and remarkable flora and fauna. I gave up on trying to grow sweet peas and hollyhocks, but tomatoes were a joy to grow in the U.S., and I couldn't foresee any difficulty with parsley. Ah! "The best-laid plans o' mice and men.." But is it a bad thing that we can't control the outcomes of our endeavours?


Unexpected Harvest

What a shock, after the parsley would not come up, though we watered it daily and pinched its weeds, after we'd given up hope, yet stubbornly watered on, finally seeing the row of reddish nubs like sleepy monks rising from the earth, their tight green curls askew, and we had rejoiced, and tended, and watched the serrated row fill out; what a shock to step into the garden and see them gone - eaten back to bareness - and fat striped caterpillars belching, as we imagined, in their place.

What were these pillagers? We knew what they ate. Against all reason we bought more parsley from the store to feed them in a screened bucket until they cocooned. Then, what a shock, one morning, to see the bucket full of Swallowtails! Great blue and gold wings quivering, gorgeous! We let them climb our hands, dry off in the sun, and go. I don't know. You plant parsley seeds, you get nothing but trouble and glory.

I Wonder About the Chores

When I wrote this poem it was in response to an anonymous 17th century pastoral oil painting of a young countrywoman riding a farm horse away from the small house between fields behind her. She was dressed for a journey, and there were bags tied to the saddle. I had an emotional reaction to the painting that took me a year to understand: I'd left my own family's small, Welsh dairy farm at 18 to move to a city, not knowing what I would need for my new life, and then I left Europe for the U.S. when I was 24 with a husband, a baby a few weeks old and two small suitcases, again not knowing what I'd need or where my journey would take me.



I Wonder About The Chores


I am traveling between worlds,
Nellie loaned to me as far as the town,
a stage to take me from there.

All the small fretting
of the work of this house:
I have left it.

The gate that stuck against its post,
the poison ivy by the raspberries,
the crotchety old pump.

The way to hang the copper
so it would fit in the space by the door.
Where the flour bin was, and how deep the remainder.

(I always loved the sweet peas,
how they bloomed and swelled quickly
before summer could burn them.)

I picked huckleberries in summer on the ridge,
stripped chestnuts in fall, hung clothes in winter winds to dry,
and pulled spring lambs from the muddy cut.

I knew the stream for watercress,
and which wild roots could fill out our stew
when the cellar was empty.

I knew the kindness our young cow required
to let down her milk: the low voice,
the smoothing of her flank.

I knew how to keep brothers from fighting.
What to say to a mother so she wouldn’t despair,
to a father to keep peace.

I wish I knew what skills will be needed
in the next place. (If there will be kindness.)
I wish I could prepare.

Alice B. Toklas's Third Rose

“Civilization began with a rose. A rose is a rose
is a rose is a rose.” -Gertrude Stein
“...when she gets to that third rose she loses me.”
-Erv Harmon


This rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall,
a yellow rose for spring and love and lust;
the third one was an eyesore, I recall.

Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso blazed our hall
and forced the careless caller to adjust;
this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall.

The weather then broke green all over Gaul,
the roses burst, the bushes were robust:
the third one was an eyesore, I recall.

Still life brushed could not be still at all:
red roses scrambled up the wall untrussed;
this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall.

The first rose rose rose fiercely tall,
the second rose was yellow, lovers' trust;
the third one was an eyesore, I recall.

A modern rose is summer's richest scrawl
though winter's withering leaves it undiscussed;
this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall -
the third one was an eyesore, I recall.

Haunted House

O haunted House of black mirth, tell us true:
are outer workings of your grizzled face,
your pointed barbs, sarcastic derring-do
whilst ruthlessly unravelling each case
just a ruse? I swear that I have briefly
seen a kind of nurturing sweetness shine
beneath your clever visage (which chiefly
mocks): a kindness working to undermine
your contemptuous front. O brilliant man,
addict to music, puzzles and drugs, much
like Holmes in his day of mysteries, we can
see how you need a shrunken leg’s crutch.
Medical sleuth with guarded, arctic glance,
a heart beats still beneath your arrogance.

Teen Ghost

November in Wales is a clammy beast
dripping chill rain: at night, disconsolate
it rattles the house, screaming;
our grey farm road in the early hours
is a stripe on its back oozing cold sweat
hedgerows of stinging nettles and brambles
its bony stickles - its drool runs down my neck
as I stand waiting for the school bus.

I kissed an American boy in England this summer
before my family moved to this new country
and he writes still, though we won’t meet again.
I am stuck here with this other, terrible kind of contact:
you by the window in your white dress, dissolving
sobbing as though your heart would break.
Why do you cry? It won’t solve anything.

I study physics at my desk by your window
write letters to the friends dropping back
listen to the rain beat down on the cowsheds.
I try to sleep sitting upright with the light on.
I hate being able to hear you! You’re dead!
All your sobbing won’t stop you fading away.

We dip our toes into an estuary, the morning after the wedding,

the young women stripped to their skivvies
leaping into the cold clutch of the water,
a seal rising to look.

There are no boys the right age,
only small brothers, cousins
and older men having a smoke.

We aunts and uncles long
to plunge ourselves into that fresh water,
but do not, with our return journeys beginning.

Or perhaps what keeps us from it is imagining
our middle-aged flesh in wet underwear,
nipples and hair showing through.

So we keep our clothes on and wade, and swing pebbles.
Remember being young, burning in dark water.
Aberystwyth Bay, March, 3 a.m.

I count thirty-four swans easing towards the horizon.

Time like locusts, my house like after thieves

While I
naked from sleep
warmed by an unexpected
benificent, empty hour
this morning waited, hopeful

like some other tree
when a redwood falls in the forest
and there's a pouring-in of light,

locusts darkened my house
swarming through the windows
onto every surface

and, shocked
I leapt up to sweep them from my desk
but they returned thickly

and I knew it was over
knew only when nothing alive
was left in the house
would they go, that if I let them
strip it all away

if I sat as if dead, as if not caring
whether there was sun
I could start again, perhaps

after a while
from floorboards, from the gloom
of the forest floor.

Resurrection

We approached the clean edge of the grave hole
my sister and I.

Mary wound on the film of her new Bakelite Brownie
lining up a sharp picture.

We shouldn’t have seen how naked he was
the rusted arrowhead between his ribs.

Not just left behind, slumped from a battle
but laid out feet to the east in a Christian burial.

An Anglo-Saxon warrior, he was. We could see his teeth.
They took him up out of the ground to the Reading Museum.

He thought he was going to lie on the chalk under the earth
until Christ came.

the night we took fish from our own river and the police came

what a black night
thick rain
branches knocking windows
water tearing through gutter pipes

a car’s engine roared up the hill
and blue lights came flashing
into the farmyard
I grabbed both beautiful sewin
ran upstairs
to hide them
under my sleeping sister’s bed
and back down to the kitchen
full of teenagers in raincoats
where I watched the porch door open
saw a fishing gaff propped
against the inner door
and someone stepped quickly over
as if in greeting
to hide the gaff with his body from view

the policeman entered
looked around
wishing us noswaith dda a good evening
asked about our neighbour
at the next farm
what we knew about him
whether we had seen him

surprised
my father said he came for milk
twice a week
carrying his can

it was hard looking innocent
when so many of us were
dripping on the floor
fresh blood pooled
on the kitchen table
the policeman did not mention poaching
had bigger fish to fry
he told us
our neighbour had been on the run
for years
was wanted for murder
wore a wig
carried a loaded
gun

Insomnia

How heavy the pull of sleep seems now
while hidden clocks are sucking at the dark
and python sheets, sensing a soft throat,
close in. Beyond these thin walls
bleached winter streets wait, silent
for the shocking wail of the early train
and though, in distant buildings,
others toss too, and fret, I can
only think of the lucky ones: couples
and their dogs, padded down
while my solitary, thundering body
races on bleak rails through iron fields
into the mouths of towns, screaming.

Poems, Like Salmon

brought in on the tide to the untidy estuary
the landless river opening
the narrower and narrower
less and less salt flow
they thrust themselves into the high reaches of water
flash brighter than the fact of a saint’s grace
than the white arm of a dancer beatified with jewels
than the arrow of a goddess unable to miss its mark
where the light air touches them
where the sun blesses their ascent
and magic vapor sheds its dust on their lithe necessity
yet many fall back to the dark rock shadows
the burden of their eggs still on them