The Radio Clock

The radio clock on our bedroom mantelpiece
believed in time: one second
followed another like a confident decision.
 
The accuracy is praiseworthy, we said,
contemplating the loss or gain
of one second in every million years.
 
It thought time would last
for ever. We too
were fond of time, the flow of time,
 
its arrow pointing
to the future. We held
the future like presents
 
we couldn’t yet open;
there were stars and trees, silver
and blue and gold, on the paper.
 
We did not think
about lost presents, or a time
when presents stopped.
 
Outside the snow fell…
it did not melt.
We had the exuberance of snow.
 
*
 
So emphatic a conjunction. The dent
of our bodies on the bed
 
as they merged like minute merging into minute
became their dent in the fabric of space-time.
 
We were comfortable living in time; the melting
of snow did not yet threaten us.
 
Our landscape was snow, shining and crisp;
holding our days it seemed to sweep
 
into the distance.
 
*
 
I said Is there a way to predict avalanches? –
that helter skelter of minutes rushing
towards destruction, shifting the soft snow,
 
as when the hands of the radio clock raced round
to catch up with a new time. The clock
had no answers, knew nothing
 
of the loss of days.
 

Daphne Gloag

first published in Scintilla, having won first prize
in its short poem competition.

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Water and Wood

We’ll always regret it, you said firmly.
It was a day when the sea was quiet
for swimming, with the gentlest undulations
of light: there was the safety
of water and its predictable demeanour
along those roads of light. The bulk of sea
clasped spread limbs, my alert weight supported
like an embryo by that buoyant warmth, a flood
of sunlight wrapping me, an intensity
of air in spate.
 
We’ll always regret it, I said, if we don’t.
It was a day when the water ran to the shore in whorls
and knots, like spiral galaxies, light
slicing the waves. We wanted to say good luck
to fishermen in the risks of water, but that
would be bad luck – they’d swear, and Piero
(who treats his ancient cat, Annibale,
with a tenderness he denies his wife) would swear
louder than the rest. We understood: no whisper of doom
must confound the efficacies of water and fortune.
 
We’ll always regret it, you said, if we don’t buy it.
It was that day when we scratched words for each other
in the sand. How long had we been married, a woman asked,
and wished us another twenty years, as small waves
sent calm lines of light towards us,
alternations of dark and light water
like a tree’s heart wood. We analysed
rhythms of waves and looked for disclosures
in the colours of water.
 
And so we did buy it, that board of fine
polished olive wood (for bread, for biscuits,
or for nothing at all). The wood
felt smooth and silky, but had the grain
and substance of growth: we held its lines
of life, the flow of words and water,
the swirl of water and seasons. We ate
our bread, and with careful fingers
picked crumbs as if they were grains of gold
from the olive wood, remembering water and light.
 

Daphne Gloag

first published in Magma;
published in collection A Compression of Distances, 2009, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-905614-79-0

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from Beginnings –
 
 
The Italian conjuror:
something is created where there was nothing

     The intense energy of the big bang spontaneously turned into
     matter, and particles and antiparticles repeatedly annihilated
     each other in bursts of energy, which in turn created more
     particles. (In this poem the conjuror’s magic words form an Italian
     nonsense rhyme.)
 
 
Ciribì ciribà, it was a land
where anything could happen:
we watched Francesco the Italian conjuror
in his baggy trousers with coloured patches stand
at his table of magic.
One box covered a bottle, the other
was empty: Stoccafisso e baccalà!
Magic words again wound about them:
 
Pinpirinpen e pinpirinpina.
The uncertainty of moments. Now the first box
was empty, the second held a bottle.
Children’s laughter shredded the night. The pair
of boxes, a bottle
flipping into and out of existence…
E’ meglio un grosso capun
che una magra gallina! We leant against each other
 
warmed by summer, with noise and colours
swirling into darkness.
Space and time expanded, and their fecundities
held us, like the lovers lying on air
painted by Chagall, bright objects
of their world below them.
Energy and matter…
Pinpirinpen e pinpirinpina.
 
Again bottles appeared and disappeared.
Ciribà. A universe was possible.
 

Daphne Gloag

first published in Scintilla as part of a poem (from Beginnings)
that won 3rd prize in the long poem competition;
published in collection A Compression of Distances, 2009, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-905614-79-0

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from Beginnings –
 
 
The children's charity concert:
matter and antimatter

     Particles and antiparticles are interchangeable, but just after the
     big bang the process whereby they kept annihilating each other
     ended by producing very slightly more matter than antimatter,
     making the universe possible.
 
 
Arriving at the church for the children’s charity concert
we remembered the words of Richard Feynman:
Created and annihilated,
created and annihilated –
what a waste of time.
He was speaking of those particles and antiparticles
at the beginning of time
annihilated in explosions of light.
 
In the church the children were playing
for the refugees of Kosovo;
our granddaughter’s long hair shone
like the sheen of her violin.
She did not know
she was a child of that hair’s breadth victory
of particles over antiparticles
in the early universe: annihilation
for all but a few, a final imbalance
just enough for making galaxies and worlds
and at that end of time
those children and the making of their years.
 
They played Bach and Twinkle twinkle little star,
not knowing what a star is
or the violence of stars,
not knowing they were perfected children
of the violent universe,
not knowing the years piled up on the scrap heaps
of that country they’d raised money for…
the man with his ear sawn off slowly
and fed to a dog like offal, the girl
with her legs torn off, her family machine gunned,
blown into darkness.
 
So many annihilations of perfected years.
But also those children in their panache of light.
 

Daphne Gloag

first published in Scintilla as part of a poem (from Beginnings)
that won 3rd prize in the long poem competition;
published in collection A Compression of Distances, 2009, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-905614-79-0

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