poems

EUGENE ARAM

Of course, it's not to say he didn't deserve to die; smiling Bob Clarke, raising his glass to me across the alehouse, thinking I was blind. Not content with a pretty wife at home he oils his way into my bed with mine. They thought that I had only eyes for books but I saw everything they did and like a spider 1 began to spin my web.
I knew his weakness for a show of wealth and used his own desires and greed to lure him on into the snare that I had set.
He bought his death and paid out the reward. The last I saw of him the grin was fixed forever as the sand filled in his grave. I think Dick Houseman was my one mistake. He ran away when we had work to do, left me to lug the bones and dig the hole and now has cut my throat to save his own. He sobbed and begged to turn King's Evidence. I had a good defence, the judge said so. It was a book defence, London defence, not one to try back here in Nidderdale. The priest has gone, no one will come 'til dawn; while Bob Clarke sits and leers at me again and waits for me to join him in the dark.
Scrambled Eqqs

Come in late in the autumn afternoon, from the garden as the sun starts to set; time that our grandmothers would call teatime. Change your clothes and light a fire in the hearth; across fields and hedges light is fading, shadows spread like old regrets at twilight. From the crock in the kitchen take a loaf and make it brown, it really must be brown.
Slice and toast it both sides until crisp, let the butter melt across it so every pore and hole is filled by the yellow blanket. Two large brown eggs, fresh from the farm that morning beaten smooth now, thick as homemade custard; aromatic, freshly ground, the pepper, just enough to give it warmth and comfort. In the iron saucepan from the cupboard the one that we bought in France that summer melt a knob of butter like a walnut, not too hot but starting to spread and foam. Slowly now the eggs are poured in the pan while with the wooden spoon that's dark and smooth whisk and beat them round and round the pot. Watch and feel it thicken and coagulate until just short of cooked you add a last spoonful of cream and turning out the flame beat it half a minute more and serve on the toast, at twilight, by the fire.
My scrambled eggs for one, now you are gone.
Obsession


Who gave you the right to walk into my home at dead of night, ignore locked doors to stand and call my name in dreams?

Who said that you could make your face appear at will in places that I go and haunt my days just like my nights?

Who told you it was fine to take the taste out of my food, the colour from the world and take the fragrance from the wine?

I did,
I did,
I did

SKELLIG MICHAEL


No soft and loving, gentle God lives here; It is a God of wrath and jealous rage. Your flesh is stripped from bone just by the wind; yet step upon step six hundred times you climb the rock-hewn stairway from the sea. The wild derision of the wheeling gulls applauds the greedy hunger of the waves that fly and snatch like demons in the night. So cold; it is a cold that splits the skin and freezes up the laughter in your soul. No silence even in the dead of night, no trees, no flowers only rock and sea and cold in every stone and every thought.








(Note: The Skelligs - from the Gaelic scelig meaning a splinter of stone- are two tiny rock islands just of the coast of Kerry in the North Atlantic. The largest - Skellig Michael - is a mere half a mile wide and three quarters of a mile long. It stands 540 feet high and is reached by climbing a staircase cut into the cliff. From the 6th to the 12th centuries there was a monastry on the island with the anchorite monks living in the stone bee-hive huts which can still be seen on the island.)

BLUES FOR BUNNY



Nature
designed you to run free.
Threading the hawthorn hedge and
crossing the open field like an Olympic sprinter vanishing
into the burrow's womb-like gloom.

You
were born a prisoner.
Sentenced to life in a four foot cell you have no need for lightening speed or ears that hear a wing-beat. Your all round vision only confirms the totality of your cage.

But
you will never know
the burning pains of hunger or the stab of fear; or
the smell of dawn in a summers meadow when the blackbird sings for joy.

I could
set you free right now
and by that kindness I would surely kill you by cold, starvation or the stoat's sharp tooth.

You believe
that I am free
because you cannot see the bars of contract and covenant and the chains which I have made from obligations. I shall not be in the meadow to hear the blackbird sing at dawn tomorrow.

My cage
is no less strong than yours and just like you sometimes I pace the floor and dream of freedom.
But I can no more hunt or set a snare than you could dig a burrow to live through the freezing night.

Both prisoners
we accept our cells
because they also keep us fed and warm. We shall not die of freedom, you and I.

THE DANCE


Do you hear me Alice, do you hear me?
The time has come my love and I am here. The moon is full tonight just like before and it is time for us to dance again.
Please wear the dress that you wore then once more, the one that shocked our mothers that last ball. You have it still, the years have kept it safe and in it you are seventeen again.
Leave everything behind and come with me across the hall and out into the night. Come with me up the hill and through the woods along the gravel drive between the elms to where the ruins of the ballroom stand. The floor is lit by starlight through the roof and swirling leaves applaud the orchestra whose music floats upon the lonely wind. Let us step out together from the dark into the silver spotlight of the moon and caught up by the cadence of the waltz the years roll back just like a turning spool. Now I can feel the softness of your skin and see the light reflected in your eyes; I place my hand upon your waist and feel your gentle curves and glow of warmth through silk. The music wraps us round and you relax and let your head fall forward on my chest; my face is bathed in perfume from your hair and I inhale it till I am quite drunk.
The dance will never end again my love For Alice I am here, the time has come.