1964

Under the gritted lid of winter
each ice-puddle’s broken plate
cracked to a star. The morning
assembling itself into black and white, the slow dawn
its developing tray. Cold steams off the grass;
the frosted yarrow and sea holly
smoke in the new sun.

*

In the barber-shop mirror, I study this museum of men
through glass: their shaving brushes, talc and whetted razors,
the bottles of bay rum, hair tonic, astringents; long
leather strops; those faded photographs of hairstyles,
that blue Barbicide jar on the counter
dense with pickled combs and scissors like a failed aquarium;
the special drawer full of Durex, copies of Parade.

*

The plane from England scores a skater’s track
across the icy sky; on the promenade, frost
thistles the railings. You hear the drawl
of the wave, the gulls, raucous at their bins,
the day’s first Labrador, his tail flogging the surf.
The quarantined city lies behind, bilge-deep in cobbles,
listing: flying the Yellow Jack, typhoid in its quick-work.

*

On the floor of the butcher’s,
blood has rolled through the sawdust
and become round and soft.
We found the blood-buds
in corners as the shop was closing, and gathered
the biggest ones in handkerchiefs to take them
to the woods, break them open for their jelly.

*

In the light from the blaze, there’s a fox
nailed to a fence-post: the tricked god
hanging from his wounds. We have nothing to feed
to the fire’s many beaks but some mealy apples
and a bottle of Hay’s Lemonade, which explodes.
I dig in my pockets and find
a Salvation Army picture of Jesus; tender it to the flame.

*

We’d skip school lunches for some milk,
a rowie and a mutton pie. A twist
of penny sweets: foam bananas, liquorice sticks.
On special days, some hard bonfire toffee
and a lucky bag, watching the third-years fight
in the kirkyard, in among the graves. One boy
holds the other’s hair so he can kick him in the face.

*

Creels are swung from boat to shore, filling
fishboxes in silver rows. A slush of ice and gulls
all day till nightfall. Then all you hear is the ice
tightening back together
and the cats crying that dreadful way they have,
like the sound of babies singing
lullabies to other babies.

*

I knew how children came, so I look for the stork
in the cliffs over the mussel pools,
in the quarry ledges, the chimney stacks,
all along the walking pylons –
search for her everywhere
in the gantries of the storm woods, in the black pines,
that she might take me back.