Finuala Dowling

Widowhood in the dementia ward

‘Oh my God, I’m so pleased to see you,’

she says from her nest of blankets.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask –

How is your father?

How is Paddy?’

‘He died,’ I say, remembering 1974.

‘Good heavens, now you tell me!  

How lucky he is.’

‘You could join him,’ I suggest.

‘I didn’t like him that much,’ she replies.

*

Birthday in the dementia ward

We are discussing her eighty-sixth birthday.

She pulls herself up from her cushions:

‘I wonder – I would really like my mother to come –

could you arrange that?’

(Your mother was born in 1888,

even if she were Japanese

she could not come.)

‘I’ll see if I can arrange transport.’

*

Butter

You know how it is sometimes with butter?

How after a free fallow period, you long for it,

how it lies shaded in its pale, soft firmness,

how it calls to you quietly from its cool clay dish 

until at last you give in, you make toast:

you don’t even want the toast –

burnt crumbs mean nothing to you –

but you but you but you want the butter.

Well, that’s how it was with you.

I’m saying this in as plain a sliced way as I can –

there may after all be children present:

you were any old slice of toast.

I can’t be more explicit than this;

I can’t slick this on any thinner.

You may have thought you were the butter

but you weren’t: you were the toast.

*

The abuse of cauliflowers

When I think of poetry scholars –

poetry academics –

I think of the way I make cauliflower soup –

how I hack at the white flowers,

how I toss them about in buttery onions and curry powder,

how I boil them in milk and vegetable stock

and then pound the whole lot up with a mechanical blender

and serve the resulting mess with stinky blue cheese.

I never dwell for a moment

on the cauliflower's pre-soup thoughts, 

its pre-soup longings.

It’s as if I don’t care 

how once this cauliflower lay in bed beside another cauliflower,

and the two of them made stock jokes, mocked celery,

and whispered, from the very bottom of their cauliflowerness,

about wanting to be loved for themselves.

*

To adventurers, as far as I’m concerned

There is a climber on TV dangling

from a rope about to die.

He reminds me of the stranded balloonist

parched in the desert, about to die;

who reminds me of the solo yachtsman

with broken arms, 4000 kilometres from anywhere, about to die;

who reminds me of the men who tried to play 

Scott-of-the-Antarctic, Scott-of-the-Antarctic

and who ended up hating each other, and about to die.

Oh misled, unfortunate adventurers: stay home!

What would it take to make you stay at home?

There’s so much to do: Make tea! Clean out the shed!

Find your inner mountain and climb it.

Find your inner sea and chart it.

Find your inner arid plain and trudge across it,

as we all do, daily, 

harnesses in the canyon 

crampons in the glacier.

Imagine how much we’d save on search and rescue

if you would only stay at home.

Imagine how many we could save

if you would only cease this quest for accidental death

and talk about your feelings; or clean the shed.

*

To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair 

I just wanted to say on behalf of us all

that on the night in question

there was a light on in the  hall

for a nervous little sleeper

and when the bleeding baby was admitted to your care

faraway a Karoo shepherd crooned a ramkietjie lullaby in the veld

and while you staunched

there was space on a mother-warmed sheet

for a night walker

and when you administered an infant-sized opiate

there were luxuriant dark nipples

for fist-clenching babes

and when you called for more blood 

a bleary-eyed uncle got up to make a feed

and while you stitched

there was another chapter of a favourite story 

and while you cleaned 

a grandpa’s thin legs walked up and down for a colicky crier 

and when finally you stood exhausted at the end of her cot

and asked, ‘Where is God?’,

a father sat watch. 

And for the rest of us, we all slept in trust 

that you would do what you did,

that you could do what you did. 

We slept in trust that you lived.

from I FLYING (2002)

11 Green house

12 I read the last page first

14 Repair

15 For Oom Piet

16 I flying

17 To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair

18 Census man

20 I have been undemonstrative since birth

21 Nine kinds of silence

22 Teaching Margaret Atwood

24 Kitchen table

26 The idea of you

27 Rule three thousand and ten

28 Fine in the Transkei

29 Blackjack

30 Under anaesthetic

32 Happy New Year 2001

34 Found poem

from DOO-WOP GIRLS OF THE UNIVERSE (2006)

39 Feeling marginalia

40 Talk, share and listen

41 Freelance writer’s lament

42 Last straw

43 The differences between Middle and Modern English

45 Well

46 Disappearing

47 Asylum

48 My sister’s fingers

49 Boys we kissed 

50 The falling feeling 

51 On the roof with Rory, 1976

53 Loving novels

55 Shops of my mother’s imagination

56 Your death

57 The lime-green clasp

59 Doo-wop girls of the universe

from NOTES FROM THE DEMENTIA WARD (2008)

63 Your children, parents, siblings, spouses, pets, bêtes noires, acquaintances

64 At eight-five, my mother’s mind

65 Taking

66 Lastness

67 Shift aside

68 Be shared

69 Self-portrait from the dementia ward

70 Hearts of stone

71 Widowhood in the dementia ward

72 Butter

73 An initiative to increase the number of male readers

74 Brief fling in the dementia ward

75 Multilingualism in the dementia ward

76 Odd one out in the dementia ward

77 More advanced thinking in the dementia ward

78 Devolution in the dementia ward

79 Protection from grief in the dementia ward

80 Red rover

81 Birthday in the dementia ward

82 How I knew it wasn’t me

83 Homesickness

84 Riches

85 Bread roll pun

86 Thoughts on emigration

87 How to use a porcupine as an alibi

89 I am the zebra

91 Summarising life

from CHANGE IS POSSIBLE (2014)

95 Micheál Mac Liammóir came to Cape Town in 1962

96 Ditty

97 Caveat

98 Wanting to get divorced #1365

99 How sweet the dead are now

100 I gossip with my sister about the future

101 On not liking oneself

102 The consolation of enmity

103 The quest

104 To adventurers, as far as I’m concerned

105 Mise-en-abyme

106 Cupboards

107 Authority

108 Composition

109 The abuse of cauliflowers

110 The lawmaker

from NEW POEMS

112 Casting the cat and the bull

114 Unforgettable

115 Life lesson

116 To young women, urging them not to become competent

117 To my sisters, on selling the old family home

118 My therapist asks when it is that I cry

119 Dog produces Monet forgery

120 Catch of the day

121 Identity crisis 2016

122 Distant mirror

123 It’s only lunch

124 The problem with this game drawn out in chalk

125 My mother the crocodile-tamer

126 Party invitations

127 Why I love an insult

128 Unhappiness

129 Two bodies could not be less alike than ours

130 One in a million

131 When panicking, think of the recently dead

132 Doubt

133 Ilk

134 How a house feels when we leave

136 Acknowledgements

‘Dowling is redefining poetry, bringing her distinctive voice and wit to bear on a medium so often stuck in moody, broody times.’ – Arja Slafranca, The Star

‘Finuala Dowling is a brave new voice in South African poetry, filled with vitality, wit, unexpected rhythms and fresh ideas… Always accessible, Dowling’s poetry is never shallow.’ – Shirley Kossick, Mail & Guardian

‘Here is a woman who does not apologise for being human… Her work is entertaining, but not compromising. It brings affection and attention to everyday emotions and experiences. They are love poems fused with passion and generosity.’ – Don Maclennan

‘The book turns on the intimate… what you come away with is delight at being permitted access to this hugely talented poet’s life.’ – Top Billing