Underling

A candle burnt through the night
Beneath the sheets I slipped my small hand
Into my big sister's much larger one
There was a cease-fire. It would be over by morning
We had no need for sleep, we only
Peered at one another in the hot, dark cavity
Beneath the blanket. It was midsummer night
And I saw beads of sweat on her high, dark brow
An aristocratic forehead, they used to say
But that was another day – before the occupation
A terrible fear washed over me, and left its residue
I was one with my sister, until she turned away
I dreaded daybreak, when I would be alone once again

It was winter now. There was nothing more we could do
I failed my sister and I would never be forgiven
Her picture was embedded firmly in my head
That girl with the honey-coloured hair
We whirled around the office, tearing open drawers
Some underling approached me, a leather bound book
Clutched in her hand. My face paled, my heart pounding
Then I sat, numbed, the diary resting on my lap
My underling hovered. ‘You will never understand’
I told her silently. But then she wrapped her arms around me
‘Your sister’s not dead, she lingers on. Those pages are her.'
And then I knew: this woman truly understood
Probably more than I ever would

Sacrifice

I am the knight
Heavy armour weighs me down
Their queen is sacrificed
And peasants and drummer-boys
Flee before me

Burnt out buildings
Babies bombed to pieces
A full moon shines
Displacement of the divine
Deluded and euphoric

Silver ships sailing
War is not a curse, for us
It is glorious. We are flying
I am the Chosen One
The revolution has begun.

The Rockpool

By the Rockpool

In this winter landscape
We walk, by the rockpool
To an outsider we may seem
Heart shaped and superfluous

We carve out initials into the ice
Carve a loveheart into a tree, laed
With the last fall of snow
And we do not dive into that deep pool

Dusk descends and we head out
To the end of the pier – and you
Clutch my small hand so firmly
Bone crunch within

We feel far away from the world
We here the sound of sirens from the city
For we two have absconded
If only for an afternoon

I feel your love for me cutting to my bones,
To my marrow. My own affection
Is a pale dancing shadow
I do not find the solidity I crave here.

Memories

By the Rockpool

In this winter landscape
We walk, by the rockpool
To an outsider we may seem
Heart shaped and superfluous

We carve out initials into the ice
Carve a loveheart into a tree, laced
With the last fall of snow
And we do not dive into that deep pool

Dusk descends and we head out
To the end of the pier – and you
Clutch my small hand so firmly
The bones crunch within

We feel far away from the world
We hear the sound of sirens from the city
For we two have absconded
If only for an afternoon

I feel your love for me cutting through my flesh,
To my marrow. My own affection
Is a pale dancing shadow
I do not find the solidity I crave here.

Fearful No More

We will be fearful no more
In my fevered shrillness
I had forfeited my land
'Take it, take it, take it
'Take this land'. I held my frail hands
Out - Wrinkled, tread veined, blue-fingered
And their visitors look into my eyes
Deep into my eyes, detect a hint
Of madness. And the couple stride away.

And we cling to one another
As the wall of water is rising
And rising and rising and rising
A storm rushes through and the elements
Are doing her bidding
And the water closes over us
And the water closes over us
And the water closes over us
Showing us the seaweed bed.
We gave ourselves to them
We did not once resist.

Years later a van draws up outside.
My ancestral cottage. A tribe of children piled out
And dance with excitement.
A girl shrills: 'This is our house now!

'No, no, no, no,' the Ghosts cried silently
But the family remains - and our incorporeality
Renders us infutile. We are helpless in the face
Of their solid, fleshed-out existence

Depths

I remember standing in the harbour, watching
As the ships came in, as sailors disembark
Scarlet knee length dresses hiked up, glittering
With gold – on ears, on wrists, on ankles
They are our chains. They drag us down.

The sailors disembark, approach us but the officers
Barely register our presence. We are too tawdry for them
Bothersome. They fix their eyes on the town-girls
And now these recollections anger me. They bud freely
In the mind.. Others doubt the authenticity

Of my memoirs. They are inflamed
At the very utterance of my name.
Crimson paint over whitewashed lives
I dredge my story from the depths
Of their calm blue and bottomless sea
And, for this, they despise me

And they make no secret of it
I commemorate the colours that dwell
In history, in mystery. I am offered
A frosty reception. I am stilt wild,
I am still toxic, tearing the thin veneer
Away from the tedious and cowardly

Worshipping the Sun

Ink-black sky superseded by misty daybreak
The darkness dissipates as we two awake
In the garden we rest our heads against
The hard wood of the trees, listening
To the miniature, bustling worlds within

Blueness and blackness fuse. An imperfect
Work of art. We two do our part
In the garden we dance in ever enlarging
Circles – a kind of sacrament
Dedicated to the dawn

For we are pagans; sinful sorcerers
Worshipping the sun as it spreads itself
Across the sky and this is why
We are destined to die by nightfall,
Consumed by fire composed of dry branches
In the centre of the village square.

Made of Clay

I am not a wild horse. I am merely
A docile diversion with creamy skin

And milky breasts and an empty head
I ask no questions; I make no demands

I am wet clay clinging to the potter'’s wheel
Ready to be moulded by your hands.

Immensity, Intensity

It is the duty of a witness to remember
It is the duty of the chronicler to dismember
This bloodless corpse, this nation’s history
But the immensity, the intensity
Of this task freezes the blood in my veins
And I am at pains to maintain accuracy
But there is a gun at my temple
A dagger at my heart and I stagger
Beneath the weight of this regime

That slid smoothly into place and the spell
They cast, the spell that put the kingdom to sleep
And, while immobile as statues, we still weep
At what we have become, at the crimes
Carried out in our name. As I am summoned
To the bunker of our histrionic dictator
They do not insist, yet I do not resist
And I live the life of a hedonist,
Destroying the future, obscuring the past.

Religion

There is no rank here.
The only thing that reigns
Is equality. This garden,
This damp, green garden
Is calm, is silent;
Too calm, too silent
And for a reason I will never
Quite fathom, Our Creator
Endowed us with free will
A burning need to rebel
And a craving for conflict
And to the one they call 'God'
I cry. 'Why, you really do
Have a rather sophisticated
Sense of brutal irony'
And I laugh and laugh and laugh
Because I am sure that humanity
Has provided millennia of entertainment
For that supreme deity in the sky
We have chosen to glorify.