May 27: My Little Girl, Carol Ann Duffy, "We Remember Your Childhood Well"

My daughter is going away for the weekend.  She is going with her boyfriend's family out to their camp.  It's rustic.  No electricity.  Outhouses.  Bugs.  Trees.  Snakes.  Bears.  Deer.  I fear for her safety.

I find it a little difficult sometimes to let my daughter go on trips like this, because I'm her father and I've looked out for her my whole life.  I'm still getting used to this whole growing up and spread the wings stuff with her.  I trust her.  She's a good girl with a very good head on her shoulders.

I am a little nostalgic for the days when she really depended on me, when she really was my little girl.  Childhood is slipping away, and that makes me a little sad.  I miss braiding her hair and saying prayers with her at night.  I do not miss Dora the Explorer.

Saint Marty is thankful for his beautiful daughter.

We Remember Your Childhood Well

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

Nobody hurt you. Nobody turned off the light and argued
with somebody else all night. The bad man on the moors
was only a movie you saw. Nobody locked the door.

Your questions were answered fully. No. That didn't occur.
You couldn't sing anyway, cared less. The moment's a blur, a Film Fun
laughing itself to death in the coal fire. Anyone's guess.

Nobody forced you. You wanted to go that day. Begged. You chose
the dress. Here are the pictures, look at you. Look at us all,
smiling and waving, younger. The whole thing is inside your head.

What you recall are impressions; we have the facts. We called the tune.
The secret police of your childhood were older and wiser than you, bigger
than you. Call back the sound of their voices. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Nobody sent you away. That was an extra holiday, with people
you seemed to like. They were firm, there was nothing to fear.
There was none but yourself to blame if it ended in tears.

What does it matter now? No, no, nobody left the skidmarks of sin
on your soul and laid you wide open for Hell. You were loved.
Always. We did what was best. We remember your childhood well.

May 26: Old Saying, Carol Ann Duffy, "History"

There's an old saying that if you don't know history, you are bound to repeat it.  Something like that.

I believe that statement is true.  It's true for people, for countries, for the whole human race.  We need to learn from our mistakes.  Wars that we've fought.  Genocides.  Slavery.  Famine.  Drought.  Poverty.  Climate change.  We need to learn from all of the things that humanity has wrought on this little chunk of rock we call home.

If we don't learn, we will kill each other.

'Nuff said from Saint Marty tonight.

History

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand- twigs, stained gloves-
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;

witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,

seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,

in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.

May 24: Love Poems, Carol Ann Duffy, "Warming Her Pearls"

I find myself drawn to love poems this week for some reason.  Perhaps it's the heat of them.  Or the hope.  Or the passion.  Reading a good love poem makes me feel like the world is okay.  That the Donald Trumps aren't going to build their walls.  That more people will embrace compassion and understanding and charity.

As John, Paul, George, and Ringo said, "All you need is love."

Saint Marty believes in the gospel of the Beatles.

Warming Her Pearls

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

          for Judith Radstone

 

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress

bids me wear them, warm them, until evening

when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them

round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk

or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself

whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering

each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her

in my attic bed; picture her dancing

with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent

beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,

watch the soft blush seep through her skin

like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass

my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see

her every movement in my head.... Undressing,

taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching

for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does.... And I lie here awake,

knowing the pearls are cooling even now

in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night

I feel their absence and I burn.

May 23: Bombing in Manchester, Carol Ann Duffy, "If I Was Dead"

I was looking for an uplifting poem this afternoon.  The day after the bombing in Manchester, England, I wanted something that spoke of hope and life and love.

I think the poem below fits the bill. 

Saint Marty is praying for peace in the world today.

If I Was Dead

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;

or drowned,
and my skull
a listening shell
on the dark ocean bed;

if I was dead,
and my heart
soft mulch
for a red, red rose;

or burned,
and my body
a fistful of grit, thrown
in the face of the wind;

if I was dead,
and my eyes,
blind at the roots of flowers,
wept into nothing,

I swear your love
would raise me
out of my grave,
in my flesh and blood,

like Lazarus;
hungry for this,
and this, and this,
your living kiss.

May 22: Poet of the Week, Carol Ann Duffy, "The Light Gatherer"

My daughter has stopped throwing up, but she's still squirreled away in her bed, under a levee of blankets, pillows, and quilts.  The bucket is still sitting on the floor.  Her room is dark and a little funky.  But she is on the mend.

There is nothing worse for a parent than not being able to make your child feel better, to just watch her cry and shiver and heave.  It makes you feel absolutely useless, like you're being derelict in your duties.

Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet of the Week understands this.

Saint Marty does, too.

The Light Gatherer

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

When you were small, your cupped palms
each held a candleworth under the skin, enough light to begin,
and as you grew,
light gathered in you, two clear raindrops
in your eyes,
warm pearls, shy,
in the lobes of your ears, even always
the light of a smile after your tears.
Your kissed feet glowed in my one hand,
or I'd enter a room to see the corner you played in
lit like a stage set,
the crown of your bowed head spotlit.
When language came, it glittered like a river,
silver, clever with fish,
and you slept
with the whole moon held in your arms for a night light
where I knelt watching.
Light gatherer. You fell from a star
into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside
mirrored in you,
and now you shine like a snowgirl,
a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder
you squeal at and fly in,
like a jeweled cave,
turquoise and diamond and gold, opening out
at the end of a tunnel of years.