It Is A Fairing

 

It is a fairing, not a show –
It is the plough – the drum –
That weeds the water from the soil –
An honest thumb.

It is a gift and not the cost –
It is a chair – a hand –
Home the word we deftly sew
Is hard to mend.

It is the sufferance and swerve –
It is the holding merry;
Cream on ice cream cracks – the Birth –
And the Rosemary.

 

© kate marlais 2011

 

Octavio Paz, Three Poems 4, Robert Motherwell (1987)

 

 



Playground

 

An ageless siege. The soldier, he, stands proudly a ‘front his killing house,

Whistles of a horse in pain the ghostly fire does source.

Indian feathers in his hair, coloured blue and green and red;

The yellow but a fallen crest now dangles on a thread.

 

Callous Captain of radiant youth are you a moggy or a mouse?

Darting eyes, he conjures all the primitives of wealth.

‘Good luck, you poor, you bungled choir! May you quarrel on ‘til dawn!’

And summoned birds on clay-clothed beds watch the fire rage on.

 

Civilian blood, once dancing bright, now lathered coal in fossil black.

Each neon finger pointing stiff, each cry a frenzied fugue.

Dissent for man is guilty bait that turns upon these innocent slaves;

A sombre, hollow bell does ring to grieve those to their graves.

 

Beastly boy! The sandy hair, full of his tale of mad disease,

Is muddied wet of wizards’ play and blinding rush of limb.

Over-head his captives three look foully upon their fiery rite -

Vultures haunt and hunt on dust and sing in to the night.

 

As mineral would plead with man to spare the luxury of ruin

The evening sun shines crocheted quilts that chalk the rapt within.

And when the cursed are led away, their souls to navigate a place,

The bell that laughs grows sleepy, hushed; the sun, a swollen face.

 

In pending fate, as sea would breath, this cowboy Satan mourned the passed –

An elegy for battles lost or robbed before the last.

© kate marlais 2011

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette

There Is No Such Silence

There is no such silence

As sad old-age

There are no forfeiting remedies.

The knee-jerk battles

Tremble through

Corridors, oak-aged aviaries.

Kicks and bangs on lino floors.

Spills and coos and hand-me-downs.

Circled assemblies of

Mismatched friends –

Piano dusty now.

Frugal visits, vague hellos

Family room in minty green.

Broken nerves remain unsung –

Repeating tires the young, it seems.

But when the laughs of escapades

Come sailing down the halls

It is the young who wait around

In sterile corridors.

 

© kate marlais 2011

 

Doors

Doors.

The In, the Out.

Protecting.

I wait outside doors.

Protected.

The light shines through -

Branches

Of the next excuse.

Through cracks

It falls on me, spattered -

Like bullets.

© kate marlais 2011

Wage Of Words

The stainless wage of words –

Squatters’ rights, steadfast bliss –

Has ten men trodden,

Watered down, in

Less time than

One could accrue.

 

Brandishing a holy lot,

Spartans did their infants send

Rose-bathed, honeyed,

Gift-wrapped to the

Furthest brink

That men could go.

 

I watch you march in prouder strides,

Yet have no conflict fraying –

Where birds might hum and nest

Before their journey’s won –

Would you make folly of those ten

Through bombast of conception? –

Warriors too, there, mighty, fell

And day was wound undone.

 

For neither is embitterment

Nor is the smiling scorn

A fair depiction of your rank –

High-headedness will none.

 

As silent as a fettered horse

Does reach unto the grass

I fear that you will soon, my dear,

Fall upon your arse.
 

 

© kate marlais 2011

Gone

Trudging through this stannic fog –

The drill of morning towns

Cuts as snowflakes

Through mould -

 

And far off as fame –

The abstract search for

Spine and cold. 

 

Fossilised forever-glances

Over sodden bars, 

Waking winds nudge lapsed memories

And the pavement warmly holds.

 

Wednesday evening,

Ten past nine –

And likely for the 

Final time - 

 

Going,

 

Gone.

© kate marlais 2011

 

Henri Cartier - Bresson

Mother

This is brilliant. 

This is what my mum wrote in response to Two Maple Grove.

The place she grew up in Wales. 

I love what she remembers about it all.  

One in a billion-gazillion. LOVE YOU MUMMY! 

(take a deep breath)
 

maple grove is very good - but 6 pence downstairs, 9 pence upstairs I think it was - that gave you scope for a bag of shrimps and blackjacks and some sherbet. Maple Grove was also opposite the allotments and where Miss Mansell kept her large cart horses and she gave riding lessons to Liz and I. and David Mercer's dad - now swanky with Wimbledon - had the only TV in the street. and Mr Koffman lived next door, and there was a swing in the garden and a very steep back lane which all the kids sped down on tea trays with string as handles and always fell off or hit the wall at the bottom. There was a coalshed in the back garden and a lavatory and a very strange lodger called Miss Hastie who haunted the upstairs - she rented a room and was about 90 and a Christian Scientist. When the coalmen came I hid under the bed. Every Christmas we got a pillowcase with oranges, games and jigsaws and something knitted by Ding. An annual pair of knitted bedsocks came from an ancient aunt and were relegated to the chest of drawers (now in back room but then was on the landing). In the garden were lots of gooseberry bushes and lots of roses in the front. Judith Benjamin was my friend and the Benjamins lived in the big house on the corner and she was given pocket money for sweets each week. Her dad was a solicitor with an office on Sketty Road, Swansea and another office in Llanelli so he often took us both for a ride when he went to Llanelli stopping at Kidwelly Castle and other such places.... and they always made sandwiches with radishes - and I've never liked radishes really. Geoffrey Benjamin went to Cambridge and I looked after his terrapins when nobody was around. Susan Benjamin was the elder sister. Every Friday Judith and I joined the family for the Jewish blessing with matzo bread. This is all when I was small. At Christmas we wore party frocks - and mine was always a hand me down from Elizabeth which I didn't mind as I didn't like party frocks anyway. 2 Maple Grove looked a bit pokey when we drove there but it probably looked bigger when I was smaller. Love mam

(she decides, after all, to continue)

I can also let you have my views on Lon Illtyd and Glanmor, the Gypsy Boy and the Macabre cafe near the Odeon cinema, buses and caravans in Oxwich. Watty the dog from Tonypandy who lived with Auntie Esther and Uncle Jack - she taught piano to the Houston brothers and Auntie Ginnie had a second hand bookshop in Tonypandy which was full of old books and comics everywhere - very dark and with a musty small but you could climb on a table and read the comic books. She had a leg in a calipher, was very smiley, but never married. Liz and I were sent there in the summer. Esther and Jack left Tonypandy and went on to run a b&b in Great Yarmouth around the corner from the Singing Postman - I was sent there to help with the b&b in the summer.

(she ends there. perfection.)

Two Maple Grove

Sheltered in suburban wombs

Thirties red and pebble-dashed

One-television smirk.

Industry, politic hum

Distancing the docile docks

That once sailed for Dunkirk.

Walk to school, walk back for lunch

Milk Bar weekends, cinema

9 pence upstairs, 12 pence down.

Photographs of speckled friends

Bobbed hair, dark and gypsy brown

Blackberry lips home-grown.

She sat in windows, glorious, bold.

Blushing wagers won or lost

Prisoners and hearts.

Coffin-tabled café meetings,

Tillers caps - escutcheons

On good boys drinking fast.

© kate marlais 2011

 

Edward Steichen, Loretta Young (Vanity Fair, c.1932)

The Hanging Air

The hanging air that smokes the house –

Out of the flowered, compacted –

Broadcast flare inflates 

And gasses 

Through the hush.

Cool a-foot, and piercing heat

Inhales a heavy blow –

Letters sent and milky –

Swallowed –

Are sickly, vain.

Sleep now tucks away its shivers,

Folds to liquid dawn,

Nursed by bare arms browning –

Eased –

Loving and alive.

 

Ding-dong bells that name the birds

Drunk as sun upon this hill;

Washing goes around

Again –

The sea purrs.

Wisdom bent by fairy rings,

The buzzing town is cleft;

A cow and moon, the bridge –

Remember –

Blissful, there.

 

© kate marlais 2011

 

 

Man Ray, Lee Miller Solarised (c.1930)

Lines

The world is shapes, angles -

Existing in satisfied order

Where I would suit

And, still, procure. 

Waiting room. 

Platform. 

 

Lines. 

Carriage. 

Living waves that roll off 

Bleeding, passing land - 

Vibrations from this 

Shovelled bass 

Are now, moving, all. 

Middle ground defines the city wall.

© kate marlais 2011