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I'm
learning it all—acrobatics, clowning,
riding
bareback and trapeze,
fire
from a sleeve: my hand's a wand.
I
weave my life round dancing elephants
who
spray the air while turning
their
backs on the crowd;
lions
who never put a foot wrong.
I'm
taking their cue, I've seen
what
people want.
Prancing
ponies teach me steps:
pacing,
adroitness, like my fellow-dancers
keeping
their spot.
I'm
walking the high-wire, making my mark
poised,
balanced, don't look away—
you
are my gravity's other edge.
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Yellow,
Red, Blue
(after
Kandinsky, 1925)
Watch
the animal eyes that whisk corners
faster
than an angel breathing passwords
in
a mesh of yellow. Cloud-sure, life flags itself on.
Circle
after circle is mapped in the mystery
of
a line quicker than an arrow, shot from left to right,
the
dark corners turned in on themselves,
while
the sea advances up the cliffs.
Presently
a cat walks tall out of the waves,
eyes
open, heading for the fire at the centre,
the
red waves fanned, turned crimson,
surrounded
by purples that ferry
the
jigsaw's spell. Choices multiply,
resonate,
form patterns for love-songs
the
heart claims again and again.
In
the background, dark moons, resilient,
juggle
patchwork squares, lines, and curves.
Light
bounces off them as finally the perfect blue
you've
been waiting for, dips, tumbles
into
the still of the storm, among reds, purples,
all
shades - this country you keep coming back to,
that
walks you home to yourself.
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Poinsettias
(for
M)
Daily she
chides
her mirror:
who is this
woman
staring back
turning the glass
around,
twisting its
magnifier
seeing a lifetime's
portraits
paraded like
miniatures -
herself at fifteen
in the school-
concert, on her
wedding-day,
in the Alexandra
Chorus,
at her son's
graduation?
She gathers in her
few strands
under the
blonde-curled wig
studies her pinched
skin,
wanting a
sign,
a rouge
in her
cheeks
an opposite of
surrender.
The love of red will
save her.
*****
Solo lamps
articulate
each starred bush.
Leaves become flowers,
flowers become
leaves,
fine red stems
shedding fire, sunrise-bright.
She sees herself
walking through
their thick wall, a
cascade of scarlet
at the hospital
entrance.
Daily the tread
through white-lined leaves,
the bloodless veined
maps, red-topped -
their blazes
reminders.
When she grows
tired, it is right
to look away,
forget
the furrowed
richness.
Three months have scarred me. . .
She studies
photographs
from last
Christmas:
she and her
sons
among the
prized
dye-bright
coal-flowers
that will not be
extinguished,
will fall off the
stem
and fold in at their
own pace.
(Excerpt from
Poinsettias
)
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For Nizametdin
Akhmetov
'You
don't know how I longed for this...'—N.A.
Freedom, forgiveness...
the words
repeat
themselves, carried through
the
audience like kindling
catching
fast. A prisoner at nineteen,
twenty
years on, he's a man uncurling
his
tongue: love, forgiveness,
the
words again, his gift, as they
collect,
fly from the rostrum.
Earlier,
he shipped out words
hidden
in logs: his poems
that
would not lie down,
that
have become his passport.
He
tells of weeks in asylums
(legs
swollen from beatings) —
wondering
if they'd be amputated.
No
one here can reach him.
He
is a man seeing spring
differently.
He thanks his liberators,
praises
newness. Daffodils
through
the window
outline
him in gold.
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