I fell asleep where a woodpecker drummed
his bill in a yew tree hollow, I felt
my refuge shudder, trembling like a man
at each axe blow, a beaten drumskin’s cry.
I saw a wild buck mingle with the herd:
he turned tame, took food from my hand,
sired sturdy calves his same chestnut brown.
I placed his grey horns on my mother’s grave
to let her talk with all the other dead.
Our trade with hairless men has brought disease.
The pasture’s poor, the mothers limp, their young
are born two-headed or with swollen limbs.
The dead don’t want us yet: we must move east
from the forest, ten days to good water.
My mother says avoid all woodcutters,
they turn to demons’ dogs at dusk. I will
elude these wolvish men whose souls are loose,
I’ll give their starling clouds the slip. When nights
are bad they shelter under docken leaves,
by yellow ragwort stalks, but I can soar,
I’m falcon now, or heron up aloft
watching my beasts, my body by the yew.
No devil’s snake shall harm me there below,
no blind worms take me into darkest earth.
The keepers’ boxes will not hold me long,
they stroke to life a bird with human head.
I will escape the great cold of the night.
*
Blackened Blues
A body bag unzipped itself
and slipped a no good body loose.
It toasted its own blackened health,
fired off a tirade of abuse,
death cries, its blackened body blues:
‘Let cockerels crow the firestorm glow
when missiles cruise your streets at night.
Let heads and tails spin round with rounds
of red and yellow tracer light.
Death dances to the blackened blues.’
‘When gunships home in on your homes
a crowded shelter’s your best bet:
its infra red is easy meat
for a heat-seeking exocet.
Death cries your blackened body blues.’
‘The curfew wakes at crack of dawn
when guns are chattering like cold teeth.
Let bullets sing out in the trees.
The convoy sighs without relief.
Death dances to the blackened blues.’
‘Nowhere to run on a death march
when mortars pound the town ahead.
Children are slow. They’re first to go
when snipers earn a pound a head.
Death cries their blackened body blues.’
‘My fighters are all irregulars,
their semtex breath’s like marzipan.
The safe areas are never safe
except to death’s militiaman.
Death dances to the blackened blues.’
‘The clampdown brings on a seizure,
the ceasefire holds in its breath.
The bread queue’s panned with hot crossfire.
The unmarked van delivers death,
death cries, those blackened body blues.
*
For Want of a Nail
Their leaders bought blind, because of the cost;
the MiG 15s (ex-Afghan) wouldn’t fly.
The ground troops halted, the battle was lost,
the breakaway republic doomed to die
for want of support, for want of a nail.
The warring factions kept up their attacks
on the besieged enclave. Their envoy’s news
didn’t reach them, something wrong with the fax
from the Geneva talks. Their Christmas truce
shot down, the town fell, for want of a nail.
The radio went off the air, the rebels
stormed the presidential palace, but the
federal forces basted them, in Goebbels’
phrase, because they needed guns not butter,
for greasing the wheels, for want of a nail.
The surgeon needed sleep: the drip-feed’s seal
was faulty, someone left a swab inside.
The new heart failed, the rupture wouldn’t heal.
They kept him on dialysis: he died
for want of a bed, for want of a nail.
The cargo shifted, the bow doors weren’t closed.
The lorry hit a car and shed its load.
She’d be here if the council hadn’t closed
the school, she had to cross the busy road,
victim of the cuts, for want of a nail.
The walkway fell fifty feet from the deck.
Rescuers were late, the ambulance stalled.
The owners said there’d been a safety check
last year, it wasn’t the company’s fault
that corners were cut, for want of a nail.
warnings not heeded, for want of a nail,
nor safeguards observed, for want of a nail,
usual precautions, for want of a nail,
normal procedures, for want of a nail,
no proper funding, for want of a nail.
The phone line broke, the deadline expired,
they stormed the plane, the hostages were shot.
The talks broke down, the army marksman fired.
They couldn’t reach the trapped people, and not
for want of trying, for want of a nail,
disaster waited, for want of a nail,
the president killed, for want of a nail,
his aides couldn’t help, for want of a nail,
the government fell, for want of a nail,
a spokesman claimed, for want of a nail.br />
*
Apocryphal
‘There is no certitude outside falsification.’
Italo Calvino
I’m hiding out in someone else’s dream,
trapped with her in the forties, in Marseille.
We’re in some bonded warehouse, and I seem
to follow what the gabbling voices say
listening behind a crate die-stamped ALGIERS.
Their growling leader sounds like Jean Gabin,
his rasped argot brands them black marketeers.
Feeling something jab through my gaberdine
raincoat pocket, rubbing my leg’s sore skin,
I touch a somehow familiar gun,
a Luger from the raid on Avignon,
the same cache later stolen by these men.
Hearing them yell a name which isn’t mine,
it dawns on me, if they are Vichyssois
collaborators, the unknown person
who betrayed our group is a Maquisard,
a double agent. They run down the aisles
between the crates, shouting they know I’m here,
I must give myself up, but someone else
has summoned them. And then I remember
my mother’s middle name, and her father
who never spoke about the Second War,
just as my gun’s sent spinning through the air
and I’m overpowered, pinned to the floor,
my long hair spilling free from my man’s hat.
You’ve got the wrong person, I say, a case
of mistaken identity. I’m not
the man whose dream this is, I’m irlandaise.
You are an English spy then? Gabin says,
No, I’m re-inventing myself here
through another life. I’m Rebecca Hayes
from Ireland, and you want my French gran’père,
who must have escaped, or I wouldn’t be
talking to you now. Jean Gabin tests me: What year is this then? Nineteen ninety-three. Wrong! When were you born? Nineteen sixty-three.
Impossible! Then who is your father?
Niall Hayes, a farmer from the County Clare,
my mother’s Yvette, they met here after
the war you think you’re still fighting, Monsieur;
but you’re a ghost now, you’re only alive
in black and white rehauntings of film noirs,
celluloid dreams more real than your own life. I like this girl, says Gabin, she’ll go far.
Contents List
9 Apocryphal
11 Clearing the Grounds
12 The Hound of the Baskervilles
13 Manhunt
14 Jasmina’s House
16 The Volcano
18 The Road
20 Goodbye to All That
22 The Smallest Hair
23 The Big Sea
24 Wasted
28 The Miners’ Wives Picket the Beardmore Glacier
32 East of Easter
34 Blackened Blues
35 The Fist
38 Biting His Hand
40 For Want of a Nail
42 The Robber’s Tale
43 John the Baptist at Ephesus
44 The Bollocks of King Henry VIII
45 Paul Hill Is Doing Bird
46 The Trojan War
47 Bird Woman
48 Jehanne la Pucelle
49 The Rock Child
50 The Magdalen Home Laundry
52 I Am Not Joanne Hayes
57 The Dressing Station
58 ‘The Desire To Be a Man’
59 Night Work
61 Biting My Tongue
63 Double Act
66 Biting Her Tongue
67 Electricity
68 The Dark Nights
70 That Kiss
71 From a Previous Life
72 A Single Tear
73 The North Country
74 Homecoming
75 Sweetheart Abbey
76 The Colour Bled
77 White
79 My Demon Lovers
