The Pure Gold Baby

                    by Margaret Drabble

The children appear before us, the children of Stirling Hall Nursery and Plimsoll Primary and Highbury Barn. Ollie, Nick, Harry, Chloe, Ben, Polly, Becky Flora, Stuart, Josh, Tim, Tom . . .

We had all thought that Sally's Ollie was the bad boy, for whom we feared the worst, but Ollie, after years of teasing Anna and committing other minor misdemeanours, had made good. He now owns a company selling organic vegetables, and a chain of up-market market gardens. He pioneers new eco-friendly planet-preserving glossy shining crops whose leaves deflect and reflect the violent sun. He is a success story of our time.

Big brother Stuart was Sylvie's drop-out boy as a teenager, but he dropped in again, and he;s now a highly paid if moody and dark-tempered barrister. He wears old-fashioned clothes but sports a pigtail. It's a strong message, a strong look.

It was pretty Josh Raven who had hit the headlines, for all the wrong reasons.

I'm afraid to say that we blamed Sylvie and Rick Raven for taking Joshua out of the state schools, to which we were all so loyal, and sending him to a private school, where he was bound to get into the wrong set. How smug we were and how self[righteous. What ideological prigs we were. Yes, he got into the wrong set -- drugs, theft, fraud, remand, court, conviction, jail. The choir-boy turned crook, the toxic luminous lamb, the public-school swindler. It was quite a story. We blamed the school, we blamed Sylvie and Rick for sending him there. The had to blame somebody. It was hard to blame Josh, whom we had known when he was so very little, when he was in a state of grace, before he went to the bad. We had known him as a baby in a pushchair, as an angel in a nativity play, as a child gazing rapt at modest indoor fireworks at Christmas. There had been no harm in him then, no sign of Original Sin.

Young Harry Grigson, Harry with the strawberry birth mark on this face, had also been blame less. But at the age of twenty he had climbed into the lions' den at London Zoo in Regent's Park, confident that he could lie down with the lion like a lamb. There was no harm in that faith, only delusion. The lion mauled him and he nearly died. He now spends his days in an institution, on one of those many institutions. It is not as pleasant as Halliday Hall was in the old days. The doctors say he is schizophrenic, but what is in a word? He is heavily medicated. We don't know if he still hears voices. We haven't seen him in years

* * * * * *

Our little children, what becomes of them? They set off so innocently on their long journey. It is hard to bear, it is hard to grow old and see the children age and suffer. It is hard to see them grow bald, and estranged, and some of them lonely.

* * * * * *

from Margaret Drabble, The Pure Gold Baby (2013).

Easter Wings

        

                             Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,

                                    Though foolishly he lost the same,

                                         Decaying more and more,

                                                 Till he became

                                                   Most poore:

                                                   With Thee

                                                O let me rise,

                                        As larks, harmoniously,

                                   And sing this day Thy victories:

                            Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

                            My tender age in sorrow did beginne;

                                  And still with sicknesses and shame

                                       Thou didst so punish sinne,

                                                 That I became

                                                  Most thinne.

                                                  With Thee

                                               Let me combine,

                                    And feel this day Thy victorie;

                                 For, if I imp my wing on Thine,

                             Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

                                  by George Herbert (1593–1633)

Knockturn

KNOCKTURN

                by Bob Hicok

Tiptoeing through the grass

not to wake the grass, sheet music

for the laments all over the field

like wings of moonlight, crickets

hushing their banter around my ankles.

then remembering they're an ocean

once I've passed, I enjoy thinking of solitude

when I'm alone as the spouse of living

with others, who are often sharp

in my experience and pointy, people

are like scissors, you shouldn't run with them,

I should go back and tell my wife

my skin is a photograph, a slow exposure

of stars she can touch

with the swirls, the galaxies

of her fingerprints when she wakes

and gives me the dream report,

decades she's been late for a test

or taken it naked, I would go

to that school, I would major

in Yes, the dark is my favorite suite to wear

where bear are also

sometimes, and coyote, and the dead

get to be whatever they want as far

as I can tell, the less I can see,

the more personally I take the little

I can make out with,

holding what I am held by, the night

and I almost the same smudge

of whatever this is, it is seductive

to wade into and slip away and not drown,

my life the only thing that has been with me

my whole life   

From Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed (2013).

The nosy cherubs on the lamps

           by Abigail Cloud

THE EVERYDAY DEMON EXPERIENCES BURN-OUT

Something on the water. Something

wholesome, like spoiling corn crops

or sparking a tri-state wildfire. Or

a bit of glamour, like stopping glass

elevators in casinos, between floors,

then dropping them. I'm tired

of small catastrophe, the delicate

balance between shrugged-off accident

and tiny horror. Fits of pique, bursts

of desperate memory, tireless, dull

annoyance: How many brittle ankles

can be wrenched in holes? How many

jugs of milk can be soured before time?

How many smashed heirlooms, rained-

out parades, singed fingertips, coins

dropped in grates, stained blouses

before business meetings? How

many shiny balloons are there still

to burst?

TRYST

The whirlybird moon, the spangles

int he cloud of her skirt, a leopard

pump hide-and-seeking in a curl

of the blankets. Her nerves banged

an anthem to the sexy Bartlett

pears, the sexy palm plant draped

in the corner, the mirror like a mouth

on the wall. She made her excuses

to the nosy cherubs on the lamps,

muffled their commentary with scarves.

She knew there would be mock

goodnights, a fractional vocabulary.

She knew a belt would get looped

around the bedpost, a candle snuffed

out with a thumbpad. The sexy china

bull. The sexy coat rack. The cherubs

knew it would all end in smoke.   

From The American Poetry Review, March/April 2014.

Leopards

      

            by Lucie Brock-Broido

FOR A CLOUDED LEOPARD IN ANOTHER LIFE

You were a seed still in Darwin's left breast pocket,

Not imagined yet, almost invisible in the felt

                               There just above his heart,

The bluey nubbin sleeping in a child's

                                                 Unmarred arms.

Things vanish in the morning when we wake

Like loam that only grows on buttermilk, at night.

In April, a tiny feline on the ledges of a billow cloud,

Or like the finch let loose in the mossery, you were ended

              Unexpectedly; what is only left of you is only me.

FOR A SNOW LEOPARD IN OCTOBER

Stay, little ounce, here in

                                          Fleece and leaf with me, in the evermore

Where swans trembled in the lake around our bed of hay and morning

Came each morning like a felt cloak billowing

Across the most pale day. It was the color of a steeple disappearing

In an old Venetian sky. Or of a saint tamping the grenadine

Of his heavy robes before the Blessing of the Animals.

I've heard tell of men who brought Great Pyrenees, a borzoi, or

Some pocket mice, baskets of mourning doves beneath their wicker lids,

A chameleon on a leash from the Prussian circuses,

And from the farthest Caucasus, some tundra wolves in pairs.

                                                                              In a meadow I had fallen

As deep in sleep as a trilobite in the red clay of the centuries.

Even now, just down our winding road, I can hear the children blanketing

Themselves to sleep in leaves from maple trees.

                                          No bad dreams will come to them I know

Because once, in the gone-ago, I was a lynx as well, safe as a tiger-iris

In its silt on the banks of the Euphrates, as you were. Would they take

You now from me, like Leonardo's sleeve disappearing in

                                        The air. And when I woke I could not wake

You, little, sphinx. I could not keep you here with me.

Anywhere, I could not bear to let you go. Stay here

In our clouded bed of wind and timothy with me.

                                         Lie here with me in snow.

From Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (2013).

Flags in a tiny hot country

THE FALL

               by Kim Moore

Last weekend I feel in love with the bathroom,

its clean white tiles, the towels hanging like flags

in a tiny hot country, this place that caught you,

that stopped you from falling from the earth.

Blank-faced, it tells no tales, won't give up

the secret of how you went from standing

to stretched across the floor, your feet

at its northern border, your head to the south,

your eyes rolling, wild as a horse, your body

an empty house abandoned to the wind and rain.

When I life your head, there's no resistance.

It moves like water at the bottom of a tilted bowl

Was it my shouting that made you surface?

Slowly, slowly you returned, the bath (faithful

creature) in the same position as when you left,

the sounds you made so far from words,

you brought another language back with you,

the hotel quiet as a church, you didn't know

the body you were in was yours, blood leaked

from your mouth and gathered on your chin,

the sink and toilet impassive and standing guard

and you remembered nothing of your journey,

minutes of your life deleted, and only this room

to witness this passing, and I can only guess

which loving object tried to catch you, which voice

pulled me from my sleep. I kick the bath -- it answers

in a low familiar tone. I stamp -- the floor bellows

its reply -- the room beneath echoes like a drum.

TLS 2/28/2014

It takes talent to live at night

          

SONG

         by Frank Bidart

You know that it is there, lair

where the bear ceases

for a time even to exist.

Crawl in. You have at last killed

enough and eaten enough to be fat

enough to cease for a time to exist.

Crawl in. It takes talent to live at night, and scorning

others you had that talent, but now you sniff

the season when you must cease to exist.

Crawl in. Whatever for good or ill

grows within you needs

you for a time to cease to exist.

It is not raining inside

tonight. You know that it is there. Crawl in.

THE YOKE

            by Frank Bidart

don't worry           I know you're dead

but tonight

Turn your face again

toward me

when I hear your voice there is now

no direction in which to turn

I sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake and

but tonight

turn your face again

toward me

see     upon my shoulders is the yoke

that is not a yoke

don't worry            I know you're dead

but tonight

turn your face again  

NYTimes Review