Poems below are taken from my collection The Fable of Arachne published by Modern Writing Press (2009) and reproduced by arrangement with the publisher.
The first three poems below are from The Web, a cycle of 35 poems (written well before the world wide web was being talked about!) The full cycle appears in The Fable of Arachne collection.
I
The web looks fragile … but is not.
It can hold great weight
It can stretch further than any article of faith
Or nylon with ladders so designed to run
Like the Great Ark
Once you’re on board
Your life is not your own
But in spite of this you’re saved. XV The seam that sews the dead to the earth/ is the one by which I’m sewn to you Quote by Marina Tsvetayeva
I have recoverd you from the earth, my daughter
Here, let me wipe the soil from your mouth
Still open in song though swallowed by another’s might
You wear your unstoppable taps, your dress with the hood,
So how does one dress a child for the grave?
Your hair is brighter and down to your waist and
Even your songs have grown…
Restore us side by side in the earth.
More than touching
Bind us to each other
So they can’t tell our bones apart
For no love is greater than this …
XX Breech Birth
On the inside of the web
books, nourishment
your partner’s easy ways.
you’ve swallowed the web
and you don’t have to think about it any more
all decisions are made for you
until the midwife says
your imagination’s breech
and she’ll try to turn it
but you’ll have to make an effort,
grind the cudgel
of your child
like a gear
towards
the birth passage:
the lovely new-featured one
you’ll be cradling in your arms
after he’s ripped you in two.
There is No Such Thing as a Childish Dream
She dreams she is large.
A giant baby in a spacesuit,
orbiting her cot,
landing on the moon of her parent’s bed.
She dreams she is more than the bits and pieces
reflected in her mother’s glasses;
she circles herself for the first time.
She holds a cup to her lips with both hands
and dreams of an empty cup
herself floating in its contents;
her mouth opens and fills, opens and fills.
She speaks in many tongues
but none of her speech makes sense,
in every nightmare she is dumb.
Waking
she throws sleep off like a parachute
her dreams insoluble,
persisting through her day.
Oliver’s Gaze
(for Oliver at 6 weeks)
Only a laser has your sticking power.
Here where you adhere in a trance
To the very pinpoint of colour
Reading light as waves across
A sea of sponge and air,
Everything for you is alive.
With the glow-worm eyes of an Old Master
You see the seam where surfaces split
And colours blend,
My body drifting in and out of view
Like tangled weed,
Rippling to the furthest corners of the room
I must clap and click to bring you back
For only sound can fence you;
Staring up at the slanting prism of my face
I come clean of the dangling mobiles, the Modigliani
Headlock from behind
And you follow my motion and smile
Whole schools of uncut thought
Streaming from the pits of your eyes —
Solitary Confinement
Is it lonely inside?
No sun, no stars, no telephone
You must wonder who dropped you
To the bottom of a well
And forgot you
You hammer on the walls every day
The world pricks its ears
Applauds
Then does nothing
Will it make any difference
When the sky (finally) opens above you?
Your bright dreams expended
In pools still draining
From your puny ankles
salliemuirden homepage 