A Part Song Denise Riley i You principle of song, what are you for now Perking up under any spasmodic light To trot out your shadowed warblings? Mince, slight pillar. And sleek down Your furriness. Slim as a whippy wire Shall be your hope, and ultraflexible. Flap thinly, sheet of beaten tin That won’t affectionately plump up More cushioned and receptive lays. But little song, don’t so instruct yourself For none are hanging around to hear you. They have gone bustling or stumbling well away. ii What is the first duty of a mother to a child? At least to keep the wretched thing alive – Band Of fierce cicadas, stop this shrilling. My daughter lightly leaves our house. The thought rears up: fix in your mind this Maybe final glimpse of her. Yes, lightning could. I make this note of dread, I register it. Neither my note nor my critique of it Will save us one iota. I know it. And. iii Maybe a retouched photograph or memory, This beaming one with his striped snake-belt And eczema scabs, but either way it’s framed Glassed in, breathed hard on, and curated. It’s odd how boys live so much in their knees. Then both of us had nothing. You lacked guile And were transparent, easy, which felt natural. iv Each child gets cannibalised by its years. It was a man who died, and in him died The large-eyed boy, then the teen peacock In the unremarked placid self-devouring That makes up being alive. But all at once Those natural overlaps got cut, then shuffled Tight in a block, their layers patted square. v It’s late. And it always will be late. Your small monument’s atop its hillock Set with pennants that slap, slap, over the soil. Here’s a denatured thing, whose one eye rummages Into the mound, her other eye swivelled straight up: A short while only, then I come, she carols – but is only A fat-lot-of-good mother with a pointless alibi: ‘I didn’t Know.’ Yet might there still be some part for me To play upon this lovely earth? Say. Or Say No, earth at my inner ear. vi A wardrobe gapes, a mourner tries Her several styles of howling-guise: You’d rather not, yet you must go Briskly around on beaming show. A soft black gown with pearl corsage Won’t assuage your smashed ménage. It suits you as you are so pale. Still, do not get that saffron veil. Your dead don’t want you lying flat. There’ll soon be time enough for that. vii Oh my dead son you daft bugger This is one glum mum. Come home I tell you And end this tasteless melodrama – quit Playing dead at all, by now it’s well beyond A joke, but your humour never got cruel Like this. Give over, you indifferent lad, Take pity on your two bruised sisters. For Didn’t we love you. As we do. But by now We’re bored with our unproductive love, And infinitely more bored by your staying dead Which can hardly interest you much, either. viii Here I sit poleaxed, stunned by your vanishing As you practise your charm in the underworld Airily flirting with Persephone. Not so hard To imagine what her mother had gone through To be ferreting around those dark sweet halls. ix They’d sworn to stay for ever but they went Or else I went – then concentrated hard On the puzzle of what it ever truly meant For someone to be here then, just like that To not. Training in mild loss was useless Given the final thing. And me lamentably Slow to ‘take it in’ – far better toss it out, How should I take in such a bad idea. No, I’ll stick it out instead for presence. If my Exquisite hope can wrench you right back Here, resigned boy, do let it as I’m waiting. x I can’t get sold on reincarnating you As those bloody ‘gentle showers of rain’ Or in ‘fields of ripening grain’ – oooh Anodyne – nor yet on shadowing you In the hope of eventually pinpointing You bemused among the flocking souls Clustered like bats, as all thronged gibbering Dusk-veiled – nor in modern creepiness. Lighthearted presence, be bodied forth Straightforwardly. Lounge again under The sturdy sun you’d loved to bake in. Even ten seconds’ worth of a sighting Of you would help me get through This better. With a camera running. xi Ardent bee, still you go blundering With downy saddlebags stuffed tight All over the fuchsia’s drop earrings. I’ll cry ‘Oh bee!’ to you, instead – Since my own dead, apostrophised, Keep mute as this clear garnet glaze You’re bumping into. Blind diligence, Bee, or idiocy – this banging on and on Against such shiny crimson unresponse. xii Outgoing soul, I try to catch You calling over the distances Though your voice is echoey, Maybe tuned out by the noise Rolling through me – or is it You orchestrating that now, Who’d laugh at the thought Of me being sung in by you And being kindly dictated to. It’s not like hearing you live was. It is what you’re saying in me Of what is left, gaily affirming. xiii Flat on a cliff I inch toward its edge Then scrutinise the chopped-up sea Where gannets’ ivory helmet skulls Crash down in tiny plumes of white To vivify the languid afternoon – Pressed round my fingertips are spikes And papery calyx frills of fading thrift That men call sea pinks – so I can take A studied joy in natural separateness. And I shan’t fabricate some nodding: ‘She’s off again somewhere, a good sign By now, she must have got over it.’ xiv Dun blur of this evening’s lurch to Eventual navy night. Yet another Night, day, night over and over. I so want to join you. xv The flaws in suicide are clear Apart from causing bother To those alive who hold us dear We could miss one another We might be trapped eternally Oblivious to each other One crying Where are you, my child The other calling Mother. xvi Dead, keep me company That sears like titanium Compacted in the pale Blaze of living on alone. xvii Suspended in unsparing light The sloping gull arrests its curl The glassy sea is hardened waves Its waters lean through shining air Yet never crash but hold their arc Hung rigidly in glaucous ropes Muscled and gleaming. All that Should flow is sealed, is poised In implacable stillness. Joined in Non-time and halted in free fall. xviii It’s all a resurrection song. Would it ever be got right The dead could rush home Keen to press their chinos. xix She do the bereaved in different voices For the point of this address is to prod And shepherd you back within range Of my strained ears; extort your reply By finding any device to hack through The thickening shades to you, you now Strangely unresponsive son, who were Such reliably kind and easy company, Won’t you be summoned up once more By my prancing and writhing in a dozen Mawkish modes of reedy piping to you – Still no? Then let me rest, my dear. xx My sisters and my mother Weep dark tears for me I drift as lightest ashes Under a southern sea O let me be, my mother In no unquiet grave My bone-dust is faint coral Under the fretful wave
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:07:25 +0000
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