Isobel Dixon
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Born and raised in South Africa and living now in Cambridge, Isobel Dixon works in London as a literary agent, but her poetry is much more than a sideline, and some would rank it amongst the most lyrical written in her generation. Her first collection of poems,Weather Eye, was published in South Africa, and immediately demonstrated a gift for evoking the landscape of her native country with a purity of vision reminiscent of the early poetry of Roy Campbell. But since she came to live in Britain she has widened her range beyond South Africa to include the mentality of self-exile, showing increasingly a sensitive awareness of how displacement and a deepening world view can go together. For any of her readers who themselves write poetry, the quiet ease of some her effects might seem unfair. “Driving through thunder and into the blue,/ my sunglasses bruise the widest of skies...” It sounds effortless, but you see what she means. She is the winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize for 2005: a natural tribute to one of her country’s most accomplished representatives on the international stage. Published in 2007, her latest collection A Fold in the Map (Salt) immediately attracted praise, especially for the poems about her father, which, if they were not so personal, would sound like unusually intense chapters in the testimony of an empire.
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(I Want) Something to Show for It
I’m not the kind who treasures
love notes in the sand, laid bare
for the lobstered swimsuit mob
to stare at, for the tide to lick
away. I want a token,
solid, in my hand. Something
with staying power, not easily lost
or broken. Do you understand?
You murmur, puzzled by my greed,
“What is it that you want a thing
to show for, anyway?” You may
well ask. It’s just a zero,
universal emptiness. It
brings forth nothing except need,
and the truth is, souvenirs
won’t do the trick: no poseur
snaps, no neat, insipid
diaries, no sickly rock,
unusual pebbles, musty shells. I want
the shining cliffs, the posh hotel,
the whole shebang. The waiters
running across emerald lawns,
their heavy silver platters
raised in skilful hands. I want
the tacky postcard carousels,
the smugly clinking tills, the dumpy
women sweating at their counters
every summer, summer-long,
as well. I want their oily husbands
grinning now from ear to ear --
I am the sea come to swallow the pier.
love notes in the sand, laid bare
for the lobstered swimsuit mob
to stare at, for the tide to lick
away. I want a token,
solid, in my hand. Something
with staying power, not easily lost
or broken. Do you understand?
You murmur, puzzled by my greed,
“What is it that you want a thing
to show for, anyway?” You may
well ask. It’s just a zero,
universal emptiness. It
brings forth nothing except need,
and the truth is, souvenirs
won’t do the trick: no poseur
snaps, no neat, insipid
diaries, no sickly rock,
unusual pebbles, musty shells. I want
the shining cliffs, the posh hotel,
the whole shebang. The waiters
running across emerald lawns,
their heavy silver platters
raised in skilful hands. I want
the tacky postcard carousels,
the smugly clinking tills, the dumpy
women sweating at their counters
every summer, summer-long,
as well. I want their oily husbands
grinning now from ear to ear --
I am the sea come to swallow the pier.
Christmas Beetles
Outside, the afternoon is ringing,
ringing, massed cicadas singing out
their silly news. The hot
brown garden’s loud
with all their gossipmongering.
The insect grapevine —
shrill bush telephone —
incessant beetle headlines
shrieked into the heat.
Like our old radiogram,
its fizzing, whistling, wheezing,
as we ease the big ribbed knob
and line the red bar up,
with news from Moscow, Greece,
Lourenço Marques.
These noisy chaps are closer,
sounding off from somewhere near.
The jacaranda, or the orange trees,
we can’t be sure.
They are everywhere,
and nowhere, sly cicadas,
no-one can decipher them.
Or was it just the sound
of sticky tarmac, shimmering?
Who knows? Perhaps the noonday shouting
never was that clamorous.
Our tricky memory contrives
and always turns the volume up
and in the end I guess
that they were merely stuck
at fundamentals, needle jumping,
at the prod of sex, or simply whooping
— summer! summer! summer! —
every minute of their short, hot beetle lives.
ringing, massed cicadas singing out
their silly news. The hot
brown garden’s loud
with all their gossipmongering.
The insect grapevine —
shrill bush telephone —
incessant beetle headlines
shrieked into the heat.
Like our old radiogram,
its fizzing, whistling, wheezing,
as we ease the big ribbed knob
and line the red bar up,
with news from Moscow, Greece,
Lourenço Marques.
These noisy chaps are closer,
sounding off from somewhere near.
The jacaranda, or the orange trees,
we can’t be sure.
They are everywhere,
and nowhere, sly cicadas,
no-one can decipher them.
Or was it just the sound
of sticky tarmac, shimmering?
Who knows? Perhaps the noonday shouting
never was that clamorous.
Our tricky memory contrives
and always turns the volume up
and in the end I guess
that they were merely stuck
at fundamentals, needle jumping,
at the prod of sex, or simply whooping
— summer! summer! summer! —
every minute of their short, hot beetle lives.
Crossing
Old men with beards remind me of my father:
surplice white, a beard of blessing,
Father Christmas face.
I just can’t help but smile at them,
old rabbi daddies, walking in the street.
My dad will tip his hat at everyone
he meets — old-fashioned courtesy --
now leaning slightly on his stick.
Does he greet dark-haired daughters too,
with just a touch of extra love?
Come to this city then and see me weave
surplice white, a beard of blessing,
Father Christmas face.
I just can’t help but smile at them,
old rabbi daddies, walking in the street.
My dad will tip his hat at everyone
he meets — old-fashioned courtesy --
now leaning slightly on his stick.
Does he greet dark-haired daughters too,
with just a touch of extra love?
Come to this city then and see me weave
Gemini
Below my heart hang two pale women,
ghostly, gelid, sea-horse girls.
Without my telling you would never
see them, tiny tapioca clumps suspended
in the silt between my bones.
So nearly motionless, they are both breathing,
dreaming their amoebic dreams,
and I swear when I wake before dawn, try
vainly to return to mine, I hear them, faintly,
murmuring. But my ribs make a shallow hull
and one of them must go. Duck, bail out,
flushed into the sewage and the wider sea.
I can’t endure them both, adrift
among my vital parts, sizing each other up
with tadpole eyes. I must decide
and feed the lucky one. Let the other shrink,
dissolve back to this body’s salty soup.`
Look closely at them: soulmates, secret
sharers, not-quite-siamese. Who stays,
who goes, which one of them is history?
She kicks up an almighty storm, makes
waves, enormous, tidal; while her sister’s
calm, pacific, dull. Our oil-on-troubled-water-
pourer, keeper of the peace. You choose --
mark one who should be squeezed out
of this narrow vessel; voided, spilled,
to lighten, buoy me, make some space.
Plain sailing then, I’ll forge ahead, forget
her spectral presence, and a lifetime’s
sly, subversive whispering. Learn
single-mindedness at last. But when it’s well
and truly done, how will I know? Will I feel
relief, release, how the balance shifts
and settles; then walk straight, unpuzzled,
sure — or limp and stumble, still
obscurely troubled, phantom-limbed?
ghostly, gelid, sea-horse girls.
Without my telling you would never
see them, tiny tapioca clumps suspended
in the silt between my bones.
So nearly motionless, they are both breathing,
dreaming their amoebic dreams,
and I swear when I wake before dawn, try
vainly to return to mine, I hear them, faintly,
murmuring. But my ribs make a shallow hull
and one of them must go. Duck, bail out,
flushed into the sewage and the wider sea.
I can’t endure them both, adrift
among my vital parts, sizing each other up
with tadpole eyes. I must decide
and feed the lucky one. Let the other shrink,
dissolve back to this body’s salty soup.`
Look closely at them: soulmates, secret
sharers, not-quite-siamese. Who stays,
who goes, which one of them is history?
She kicks up an almighty storm, makes
waves, enormous, tidal; while her sister’s
calm, pacific, dull. Our oil-on-troubled-water-
pourer, keeper of the peace. You choose --
mark one who should be squeezed out
of this narrow vessel; voided, spilled,
to lighten, buoy me, make some space.
Plain sailing then, I’ll forge ahead, forget
her spectral presence, and a lifetime’s
sly, subversive whispering. Learn
single-mindedness at last. But when it’s well
and truly done, how will I know? Will I feel
relief, release, how the balance shifts
and settles; then walk straight, unpuzzled,
sure — or limp and stumble, still
obscurely troubled, phantom-limbed?
Meet my Father
Meet my father, who refuses food --
pecks at it like a bird or not at all --
the beard disguising his thin cheeks.
This, for a man whose appetite was legend,
hoovering up the scraps his daughters couldn’t eat.
The dustbin man, we joked.
And here he is, trailing his fork
through food we’ve laboured to make soft,
delicious, sweet. Too salty, or too tough,
it tastes of nothing, makes him choke,
he keeps insisting, stubbornly.
In truth, the logic’s clear. His very life
is bitter and the spice it lacks is hope.
He wants to stop. Why do we keep on
spooning dust and ashes down his throat?
pecks at it like a bird or not at all --
the beard disguising his thin cheeks.
This, for a man whose appetite was legend,
hoovering up the scraps his daughters couldn’t eat.
The dustbin man, we joked.
And here he is, trailing his fork
through food we’ve laboured to make soft,
delicious, sweet. Too salty, or too tough,
it tastes of nothing, makes him choke,
he keeps insisting, stubbornly.
In truth, the logic’s clear. His very life
is bitter and the spice it lacks is hope.
He wants to stop. Why do we keep on
spooning dust and ashes down his throat?
Plenty
When I was young and there were five of us,
all running riot to my mother’s quiet despair,
our old enamel tub, age-stained and pocked
upon its griffin claws, was never full.
Such plenty was too dear in our expanse of drought
where dams leaked dry and windmills stalled.
Like Mommy’s smile. Her lips stretched back
and anchored down, in anger at some fault --
of mine, I thought — not knowing then
it was a clasp to keep us all from chaos.
She saw it always, snapping locks and straps,
the spilling: sums and worries, shopping lists
for aspirin, porridge, petrol, bread.
Even the toilet paper counted,
and each month was weeks too long.
Her mouth a lid clamped hard on this.
We thought her mean. Skipped chores,
swiped biscuits — best of all
when she was out of earshot
stole another precious inch
up to our chests, such lovely sin,
lolling luxuriant in secret warmth
disgorged from fat brass taps,
our old compliant co-conspirators.
Now bubbles lap my chin. I am a sybarite.
The shower’s a hot cascade
and water’s plentiful, to excess, almost, here.
I leave the heating on.
And miss my scattered sisters,
all those bathroom squabbles and, at last,
my mother’s smile, loosed from the bonds
of lean, dry times and our long childhood.
all running riot to my mother’s quiet despair,
our old enamel tub, age-stained and pocked
upon its griffin claws, was never full.
Such plenty was too dear in our expanse of drought
where dams leaked dry and windmills stalled.
Like Mommy’s smile. Her lips stretched back
and anchored down, in anger at some fault --
of mine, I thought — not knowing then
it was a clasp to keep us all from chaos.
She saw it always, snapping locks and straps,
the spilling: sums and worries, shopping lists
for aspirin, porridge, petrol, bread.
Even the toilet paper counted,
and each month was weeks too long.
Her mouth a lid clamped hard on this.
We thought her mean. Skipped chores,
swiped biscuits — best of all
when she was out of earshot
stole another precious inch
up to our chests, such lovely sin,
lolling luxuriant in secret warmth
disgorged from fat brass taps,
our old compliant co-conspirators.
Now bubbles lap my chin. I am a sybarite.
The shower’s a hot cascade
and water’s plentiful, to excess, almost, here.
I leave the heating on.
And miss my scattered sisters,
all those bathroom squabbles and, at last,
my mother’s smile, loosed from the bonds
of lean, dry times and our long childhood.
Shaken from her Sleep
A girl wakes in the night. The room
is trembling and at first she thinks
it’s just her anxiousness, a dream,
the heat — her boyfriend’s t-shirt clinging
damply to her skin. He’s gone,
left on the train, just yesterday,
called up for Basics. (Now, in camp,
he’s polishing his boots and trying
not to cry.) The cloth still smells of him.
She goes out on the balcony
to breathe, to stop the midnight quake,
but finds it waiting for her
in the humid dark. A coming
storm, steel banks of clouds advancing,
thundering? But no, the drought’s
not broken yet. The streets are dry
and she can see Orion’s Belt,
the jewelled sword poised in the sky
above the town, the plain. Can he see
it too, where he is — hair shorn, close
to his skull, that handsome head,
caressed and loved, laid in her lap?
Leaning on the rail, she gulps
in air, to drown the ache, and feels
the metal shiver in her grip.
Through the trees, down at the crossing,
she now spies the cause: a convoy,
giant tortoises, lumbering, down
the main street, to the church.
Will the spire shake too as they pass,
head for the town hall and the park
where the angel stands, raising
her sword above the lost sons’ names?
Soft summer nights, he’d steal the roses
planted in their memory, for her,
without a thought. But now the world
is real, though she can’t make sense
of those distant wars and this night’s
visitation, how they fit, or not.
In these small hours they loom immense,
slow, clumsy creatures hiding keen,
ferocious cleverness. But in
the sunshine of Commando Day
they’ll seem much tamer, as the children
clamber over the displays and fathers
marvel at design, ‘in spite
of sanctions’, talk of threat calmed
by this show of powerful
defence. But now she lies down, hopes
her heart’s mad drum will let her sleep
again. Disturbed, she’s not sure what
she fears the most: what’s outside
all she knows; or that their love,
her silence, and this little, peaceful
town, are neat, efficient levers
in some terrible machine.
is trembling and at first she thinks
it’s just her anxiousness, a dream,
the heat — her boyfriend’s t-shirt clinging
damply to her skin. He’s gone,
left on the train, just yesterday,
called up for Basics. (Now, in camp,
he’s polishing his boots and trying
not to cry.) The cloth still smells of him.
She goes out on the balcony
to breathe, to stop the midnight quake,
but finds it waiting for her
in the humid dark. A coming
storm, steel banks of clouds advancing,
thundering? But no, the drought’s
not broken yet. The streets are dry
and she can see Orion’s Belt,
the jewelled sword poised in the sky
above the town, the plain. Can he see
it too, where he is — hair shorn, close
to his skull, that handsome head,
caressed and loved, laid in her lap?
Leaning on the rail, she gulps
in air, to drown the ache, and feels
the metal shiver in her grip.
Through the trees, down at the crossing,
she now spies the cause: a convoy,
giant tortoises, lumbering, down
the main street, to the church.
Will the spire shake too as they pass,
head for the town hall and the park
where the angel stands, raising
her sword above the lost sons’ names?
Soft summer nights, he’d steal the roses
planted in their memory, for her,
without a thought. But now the world
is real, though she can’t make sense
of those distant wars and this night’s
visitation, how they fit, or not.
In these small hours they loom immense,
slow, clumsy creatures hiding keen,
ferocious cleverness. But in
the sunshine of Commando Day
they’ll seem much tamer, as the children
clamber over the displays and fathers
marvel at design, ‘in spite
of sanctions’, talk of threat calmed
by this show of powerful
defence. But now she lies down, hopes
her heart’s mad drum will let her sleep
again. Disturbed, she’s not sure what
she fears the most: what’s outside
all she knows; or that their love,
her silence, and this little, peaceful
town, are neat, efficient levers
in some terrible machine.
She comes Swimming
She comes swimming to you, following
da Gama’s wake. The twisting Nile
won’t take her halfway far enough.
No, don’t imagine sirens — mermaid
beauty is too delicate and quick.
Nor does she have that radiance,
Botticelli’s Venus glow. No golden
goddess, she’s a southern
selkie-sister, dusky otter-girl
who breasts the cold Benguela, rides
the rough Atlantic swell, its chilly
tides, for leagues and leagues.
Her pelt is salty, soaked. Worn out,
she floats, a dark Ophelia, thinking
what it feels like just to sink
caressed by seaweed, nibbled by
a school of jewel-plated fish.
But with her chin tipped skyward
she can’t miss the Southern Cross
which now looks newly down on her,
a buttress for the roof of her familiar
hemisphere. She’s nearly there.
With wrinkled fingertips, she strokes
her rosary of ivory, bone and horn
and some black seed or stone
she can’t recall the name of,
only knows its rubbed-down feel.
And then she thanks her stars,
the ones she’s always known,
and flips herself, to find her rhythm
and her course again. On, southwards,
yes, much further south than this.
This time she’ll pay attention
to the names — not just the English,
Portuguese and Dutch, the splicings
and accretions of the years. She’ll search
for first names in that Urworld, find
her heart-land’s mother tongue.
Perhaps there’s no such language,
only touch — but that’s at least a dialect
still spoken there. She knows when she
arrives she’ll have to learn again,
so much forgotten, lost. And when
they put her to the test she fears
she’ll be found wanting, out of step.
But now what she must do is swim,
stay focused on each stroke,
until she feels the landshelf
far beneath her rise, a gentle slope
up to the rock, the Cape,
the Fairest Cape. Her Mother City
and its mountain, waiting, wrapped
in veils of cloud and smoke.
Then she must concentrate, dodge
nets and wrack, a plastic bag afloat --
a flaccid, shrunk albino ray --
until she’s close enough to touch
down on the seabed, stumble
to the beach — the glistening sand
as great a treasure as her Milky Way --
fall on her knees and plant a kiss
and her old string of beads,
her own explorer’s cross
into the cruel, fruitful earth at last.
She’s at your feet. Her heart
is beating fast. Her limbs are weak.
Make her look up. Tell her she’s home.
Don’t send her on her way again.
(Painting by Laura Smith, Laurence on Green Flowers, 2002)
da Gama’s wake. The twisting Nile
won’t take her halfway far enough.
No, don’t imagine sirens — mermaid
beauty is too delicate and quick.
Nor does she have that radiance,
Botticelli’s Venus glow. No golden
goddess, she’s a southern
selkie-sister, dusky otter-girl
who breasts the cold Benguela, rides
the rough Atlantic swell, its chilly
tides, for leagues and leagues.
Her pelt is salty, soaked. Worn out,
she floats, a dark Ophelia, thinking
what it feels like just to sink
caressed by seaweed, nibbled by
a school of jewel-plated fish.
But with her chin tipped skyward
she can’t miss the Southern Cross
which now looks newly down on her,
a buttress for the roof of her familiar
hemisphere. She’s nearly there.
With wrinkled fingertips, she strokes
her rosary of ivory, bone and horn
and some black seed or stone
she can’t recall the name of,
only knows its rubbed-down feel.
And then she thanks her stars,
the ones she’s always known,
and flips herself, to find her rhythm
and her course again. On, southwards,
yes, much further south than this.
This time she’ll pay attention
to the names — not just the English,
Portuguese and Dutch, the splicings
and accretions of the years. She’ll search
for first names in that Urworld, find
her heart-land’s mother tongue.
Perhaps there’s no such language,
only touch — but that’s at least a dialect
still spoken there. She knows when she
arrives she’ll have to learn again,
so much forgotten, lost. And when
they put her to the test she fears
she’ll be found wanting, out of step.
But now what she must do is swim,
stay focused on each stroke,
until she feels the landshelf
far beneath her rise, a gentle slope
up to the rock, the Cape,
the Fairest Cape. Her Mother City
and its mountain, waiting, wrapped
in veils of cloud and smoke.
Then she must concentrate, dodge
nets and wrack, a plastic bag afloat --
a flaccid, shrunk albino ray --
until she’s close enough to touch
down on the seabed, stumble
to the beach — the glistening sand
as great a treasure as her Milky Way --
fall on her knees and plant a kiss
and her old string of beads,
her own explorer’s cross
into the cruel, fruitful earth at last.
She’s at your feet. Her heart
is beating fast. Her limbs are weak.
Make her look up. Tell her she’s home.
Don’t send her on her way again.
(Painting by Laura Smith, Laurence on Green Flowers, 2002)
The Skinning
I watched my older cousin skin a mole:
it seemed a fearsome thing to do, but I was eager
to be big and full of knowledge, so I stayed there,
brave girl, hunkered down, my flowered skirt
rucked up between my summer knees.
The shed’s stone step — his rough autopsy table —
pressed the morning’s gathered heat into my soles,
the same heat rising through the opened body
of the mole. I frowned against the boomerang
of sun, flung, swerving, off the blade at me,
and in the quiet of the early afternoon — the grown-ups
at their ritual naps — the whispering, skrrt-skrrt,
skin peeling back as if from velvet fruit, rasped
louder than the new, enormous thudding of my heart.
No bigger than a mango really, it had fitted in his palm
after the shot, a trophy for his patience, waiting, poised,
brave backyard hunter, ready finger on the trigger lip.
Unsuspecting, it had snuffled to the ceiling of the lawn,
a creature from a picture book, old Mouldiwarp: soft snout,
a pair of small, intrepid claws, a grubby engineer
whose only fault was choosing my aunt’s emerald pride
and joy as his back door. But now it lay as dumb
as fruit, and leaking juice, a thick and sweethot scent
I had to suck my teeth against — but no, I wouldn’t
look away, or pinch my nose, as his brown fingers,
almost priestly, probed the tight-packed inner things.
I watched, and didn’t flinch: his certainty and skill —
and then his sudden, flashing grin, conspiratorial,
as though I wasn’t just a scaredy-cat who couldn’t catch
a ball or swim: I’d crouched to skin a mole with him,
and so I too, accomplice now, was in on his small kill.
it seemed a fearsome thing to do, but I was eager
to be big and full of knowledge, so I stayed there,
brave girl, hunkered down, my flowered skirt
rucked up between my summer knees.
The shed’s stone step — his rough autopsy table —
pressed the morning’s gathered heat into my soles,
the same heat rising through the opened body
of the mole. I frowned against the boomerang
of sun, flung, swerving, off the blade at me,
and in the quiet of the early afternoon — the grown-ups
at their ritual naps — the whispering, skrrt-skrrt,
skin peeling back as if from velvet fruit, rasped
louder than the new, enormous thudding of my heart.
No bigger than a mango really, it had fitted in his palm
after the shot, a trophy for his patience, waiting, poised,
brave backyard hunter, ready finger on the trigger lip.
Unsuspecting, it had snuffled to the ceiling of the lawn,
a creature from a picture book, old Mouldiwarp: soft snout,
a pair of small, intrepid claws, a grubby engineer
whose only fault was choosing my aunt’s emerald pride
and joy as his back door. But now it lay as dumb
as fruit, and leaking juice, a thick and sweethot scent
I had to suck my teeth against — but no, I wouldn’t
look away, or pinch my nose, as his brown fingers,
almost priestly, probed the tight-packed inner things.
I watched, and didn’t flinch: his certainty and skill —
and then his sudden, flashing grin, conspiratorial,
as though I wasn’t just a scaredy-cat who couldn’t catch
a ball or swim: I’d crouched to skin a mole with him,
and so I too, accomplice now, was in on his small kill.
Weather Eye
In summer when the Christmas beetles
filled each day with thin brass shrilling,
heat would wake you, lapping at the sheet,
and drive you up and out into the glare
to find the mulberry’s sweet shade
or watch ants marching underneath the guava tree.
And in the house Mommy would start
the daily ritual, whipping curtains closed,
then shutters latched against the sun
and when you crept in, thirsty, from the garden,
the house would be a cool, dark cave,
an enclave barricaded against light
and carpeted with shadow, still
except the kitchen where the door was open
to nasturtiums flaming at the steps
while on the stove the pressure cooker chugged
in tandem with the steamy day.
And in the evenings when the sun had settled
and crickets started silvering the night,
just home from school, smelling of chalk and sweat,
Daddy would do his part of it, the checking,
on the front verandah, of the scientific facts.
Then if the temperature had dropped enough
the stays were loosened and the house undressed
for night. Even the front door wide now
for the slightest breeze, a welcoming
of all the season’s scents, the jasmine,
someone else’s supper, and a neighbour’s voice -
out walking labradors, the only time of day
for it, this time of year. How well the world
was ordered then. These chill machines
don’t do it half as true, the loving regulation
of the burning days. Somehow my judgment isn’t quite
as sure when faced with weather-signs. Let me come home
to where you watch the skies and keep things right.
For Ann and Harwood
filled each day with thin brass shrilling,
heat would wake you, lapping at the sheet,
and drive you up and out into the glare
to find the mulberry’s sweet shade
or watch ants marching underneath the guava tree.
And in the house Mommy would start
the daily ritual, whipping curtains closed,
then shutters latched against the sun
and when you crept in, thirsty, from the garden,
the house would be a cool, dark cave,
an enclave barricaded against light
and carpeted with shadow, still
except the kitchen where the door was open
to nasturtiums flaming at the steps
while on the stove the pressure cooker chugged
in tandem with the steamy day.
And in the evenings when the sun had settled
and crickets started silvering the night,
just home from school, smelling of chalk and sweat,
Daddy would do his part of it, the checking,
on the front verandah, of the scientific facts.
Then if the temperature had dropped enough
the stays were loosened and the house undressed
for night. Even the front door wide now
for the slightest breeze, a welcoming
of all the season’s scents, the jasmine,
someone else’s supper, and a neighbour’s voice -
out walking labradors, the only time of day
for it, this time of year. How well the world
was ordered then. These chill machines
don’t do it half as true, the loving regulation
of the burning days. Somehow my judgment isn’t quite
as sure when faced with weather-signs. Let me come home
to where you watch the skies and keep things right.
For Ann and Harwood