Wolf Tongue (29 page)

First always the birds, buds, the wind-driven wild

running burn. Each morning, each season, so high in the sky.

Before it turned into a barbed wire compound.

Wild freedom of Sparty Lea turned into a Nazi camp.

Pride brought it down to this, wild self-willed pride,

family difference, sister and brother, and wild unlifting

everlasting vanity. Pull down I say pull down, but it

was too late. We stand together upon the peak and crest

your tongue still clucking and purring. You’re the real poet!

You point at

       the clouds sweeping from Ireland towards the forgotten

sad hotels of Dunbar. Chucklehen, hazel-haired and eyed,

you always were the best. The two daughters you have now

in Haltwhistle and a strong husband who works from dawn

till end of day. Strong and upright and heavenly Tom strong.

I’ve lost my new love. Nowt, blown away

                                               feathery leaf, upland wind.

If anyone knows about sullen loneliness, you do

Yet there’s a grin in the wind, heartless and cold

There’s dark in the darkness, beauty of streams

I low my beams to you, from tunnel to tunnel

as if the frozen air had a distinct personality

Standing at the lonnen head, holding leeks, you

sawed my glance in half with yours. What keen eyes!

Such strange, out-dated clothes. What’s inside counts.

Leaning into the tall grass grandness of your alert stance

towards the west and the brilliant beauties of Ireland,

I know now why you took the sickle hook

backing the beasts into their shutdown shed

You chopped the gate for want of sound

but you had sound, all sound, my purr mistress

my fantastic slavver merchant, when we peeled the sky

together we had water and silence and fire and togetherness

the lights of all you didn’t say knots my life and all dreams.

Slit of light across the sky above the city: 7 a.m:

raining and me wandering

Pearl in her moonshawl

in the sky gazing down at me – saying,

stay cool just like the frost on the lawns.

You’ll melt in time.

Your broken heart will be warmed again.

Just look at the upcoming sunne.

Anger is hot, and Bar you have too much of it.

Passion is fine, fine, a fine gripping thing,

like we gripped fingers

by the Prudhoe bluebell beds, but hot temper is not.

We were hot, but never blasted

                                            were we

        like the clearing at night of the Consett Steelworks

ovens before the Pharisees shut them down.

Do you remember the flames we saw

from the rim of the law

holding hands             and although
you
spoke

it was
my
tongue and cleft palate

                          also containing music, music, music,

and we breathed

in each other’s mouths, so young – innocent even – and the flames high

200 feet from the ovens in the air

            like Blake’s vision of Adam in the arms of heaven

of which you told me.

God help us

you full of talk of a city called Edinburgh

and me in silence so very deep we were so very much in love.

And the burns and sikes and streams

though shallow

were deep music to us.

You trout-tickler,

                     you flower-picker,

                        climber in willow trees, me laughing below

as best I could laugh, though you never thought it ugly.

Indeed the word you used was the word beautiful,

pinning cowslips behind my ears,

you patting and running fingers through our

beckwashed hair.

Lying by the marigold beds

bare toes entwined, then dancing under branches

before the elms ever died. But our mutual hearts never did.

Bar it is 7 and your raining rage

must cease

under my morning moon.

In my dawn shawl looking dawndown upon you

in your foot-striding fellhighhighupuptopheavyrainbeatingrainrain.

We have always walked together so long.

In the long grass we walked and walked forever so long so very language long

and I could say so once you had the slate in my lap.

My tongue blank – FOREVER, word we wrote on a slate, remember

when you taught me? – only my hands and eyes moving now – two

daughters we could have had –

but I am looking kindly and lovingly on you

Please do it

               – cool your raging fire lovelorn heart – for me.

And love me – forever.

Darkly-harnessed light will fall like a shawl

and be the hunky-dory

death of us all. A hawk-wing death,

a shrike strike death, a death in a lair.

This mossy path, frilled with feldspar

to prick your pearly toes, fresh from the marigolds,

the little stile not squeaking now, lubricated

hinges, hymns to the silence of adult interference,

new sunken screwheads glinty in sunlight,

the death of the white linen: our cot-death.

It was all, all of it, all for us, from the wonders

of our mysterious heaven

to the trout’s opal seed-sac bubbling with jewels.

The water was anointment water,

a cool upland baptism. You, you

were Delilah and Mary-of-the-tears,

of the unspoiled lips lapping rushing whitewater.

Milton was a blind man and we knew nothing of him.

Paradise Lost to the ears of his daughter.

Where are they now, our camps of wild primrose?

Now we are adults too, all grown-up.

You’re there, I’m here, miles from our happiness.

We are not stone, but we are in the grinder.

Everything is lost, and we are dust and done for.