AN ANCIENT RITUAL

 

 

If a friend (even an acquaintance)

was threatened by serious illness,

she went on the alert:

an animal scenting. Visits etcetera

became frequent, obsessive.

It took years to understand that 

the patient was irrelevant.                      

 

She was performing an ancient ritual

of obeisance and acknowledgement

to a different class of being,

another power altogether:

an attempt to placate and divert

from herself, if just for one moment,

that fearful, focussed attention.

 

 

 

PAIN FIGURE

 

 

The head is enormous,

every feature magnified:   

rabbit-eyed, puffy-lipped,

tongue inflamed, aching teeth;      

and the hands like padded

gauntlets, fingers extended,

legs and feet water-logged

as if moon-booted – 

Dr. Frankenstein`s vision;  

                               

limbs, appendages and organs

doubled, quadrupled in size

to indicate their sensitivity

to pleasure and pain, record

the network of nerve-paths

which carry the signals    

like bristling roots that spread

from the stem of an ivy:   

centipede-feet grappling a wall; 

 

that blue and purple drawing

from an antique book, a figure

with the proportions more

of a rubber doll, an embryo 

or acupuncture model 

than a normal human: 

recalling which, awake through

the small hours, I feel myself

become its living version.

 

 

from forthcoming COLLECTED POEMS

 

 

 

PAIN

 

 

The track of an electric

storm sparked and jagged

and bounced across my body,

through every limb and part,

but settled nowhere;

as a bird trapped in a room

veers and darts from one wall

to another, ceiling to floor.

 

Heat flared in my back:

a firework arching out

its tentacles – molten

ores and golden jets,

fading flakes of light

from earlier explosions,

a meteor shower sifting down

a black summer sky

 

 – or a rose, wide

open, suddenly past

the crucial moment, letting

all its petals fall.

A thick, hot, blindingly

bright fluorescent tube

is pressed against my spine.

Then everything goes dark.

 

from: SUGAR-PAPER BLUE, 1997

 

 

 

JADE

 

 

My toe won`t heal,

for months needs dressing.

Maybe the cure is jade

with its gift of renewal,

a piece from the burial suit

of a Chinese emperor, which

he hoped would make him immortal.

 

Whole lives used

to quarry, slice, abrade

the precious stone

mottled green as a bruise,

a rare mouldy cheese,

into small rectangular plates

            like the counters and chips

            for a game no one alive

            can play, or the scaly

            back of a dragon-god

linked with gold wire

into a suit of armour

absurd and awesome

as a Lilliputian attempt

to gird Gulliver

or the determination

to survive aeons.

 

How long before a new

toenail grows from the root

to replace the damaged disk,

opaque as jade? What

did they see, what did they find,

that first moment when

the tomb was opened? Tarry

ochre-streaked remains and

the scattered broken parts

of an empty jade suit.

 

 

from: SUGAR-PAPER BLUE, 1997

 

 

 

BRUISES

 

 

At first my face looked smeared

with dust or earth or soot, like

bread when it starts to go mouldy.

Then slate-blue brightened to purple

and a curdled green tinge

flushed up like the underpainting

on a Byzantine ikon

or a ghostly Duccio virgin.

 

After the swelling`s gone,

the bruises faded, I certainly

hope there won`t be another

occasion – though watching the changes

(there must be a fixed sequence:

something to do with rates of decay

of bloodclots or protein?),

was interesting.

 

from: SUGAR-PAPER BLUE, 1997

 

 

 

SHOCKED

            (i. m. F.M.)

 

How few expressions a face adopts,

are even possible. Muscles

tighten or relax in combinations

of the same features – whether

to laugh or groan or sob. To read

its meaning, you need the context.

 

That look of amazement

brows raised and eyes rounded

mouth held pursed forward

with closed lips presenting

for a kiss or to repress – what

wordless recognition?

 

I hadn`t seen that face since we met

forty years before, days

after her marriage, until here

in a hospital ward, after

the operation, where she waits

for the biopsy results.

 

The same expression: shocked

by fear or delight (now she

has met the gaze of both

that pair, Love & Death), back

to the core of her obstinately

unalterable self.

 

from: BURNING WIRE, 2002

© Ruth Fainlight