Fitting the handle to the twisting blades

of what might be stomach or heart, is a feat.

When it’s fully assembled the heavy innards

can be viewed through the gape in the head.

A screw buttons the rings of the mouth. Once

the table’s in its grasp, thanks to metal wings,

anyone can see the mincer is not to be messed with.

It’s as familiar with holding back as the black dog

with two heads, has never heard of the country

of perhaps. Neither subtlety nor beauty

are words in its language – there are half a dozen

for mastication. I manage to avoid this character now

but once I saw it being packed on Wednesdays

with dry chunks cut from the Sunday roast

and watched it force out squiggles of meat

that were miserable as the drizzle at the window.

Every scrap was cut, every scraping saved.

Time was devoured by shelling, mincing, peeling.

Oh yes, the mincer, exhibiting its body parts,

lurked beneath the shiny surface of my childhood.

It meant hot red punishment dug into the palm

of the hand as the mulish handle resisted.

It meant becoming a woman was to be clamped

to kitchen, mangle and ironing board. It meant

the boredom of dusters, joylessness – and not

even a shelf for the self to bloom. It meant

lying in bed wishing irons to rust, dusters

to die, and promising myself I’d never mince.

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The dictionary defines viaduct

as a structure which carries a railway

or road over a valley. But to me

viaduct is the reddish arches beside

Pymmes Brook, the cathedral aisle which slopes

upwards past the hedge of the bowling green

and the tennis courts, the slants of sunlight on walls,

on earth floors. The viaduct is guardian

of Snake Island where my child paddled

deep into imagination, it’s keeper

of the park where I walk to renew myself,

where yesterday I passed the flamboyant red

of an autumn sycamore, saw whirling dots

of starlings settle in an oak that at once

became a singing tree, each bird

a note on the stave of twigs.

                                                         I will never strip

the viaduct to its bare facts: the height

of its arches, dirty pink patches on bricks,

or even the stains from water trickles though

they resemble tears. It would lose meaning

like a face with perfect features does

if it’s blank, without context.

                                                            Think of the image

of Vivien Leigh as Aurora in long folds

of a gown rising through the fluff of mist,

a swan’s wing of cloud behind her head,

her sweet downward eyes, the white garland

on her dark hair, one arm upraised, the other

stretched out as if to offer us the day.

The man who created this vision believed

suggestion was everything. He would never

have reduced a filmstar to the flesh and bones

of a woman who is ill and depressed.

                                                                          I share

with him the passion for a greater reality:

the vision of that goddess promising dawn,

the purplish blur of the viaduct’s bricks

at dusk, the invisible rumble it carries

when little squares of light threading the darkness

bring me news that day is about to break.

The photographer of Vivien Leigh was Angus McBean

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No opening in the house is shut

but the heat's a cage I have to bear.

By the back door where I burnt

my soles this afternoon I long for air

cool as a fish's belly to creep out

of Pymmes Brook up the park slope

to my fence, press the milky smell

of midnight blades to my face.  Not

a ruffle, not even the owl

calling like an obsessive ghost

from clots of trees.  Upstairs the curtains

are undrawn and I watch my self in a mist

of cotton nightdress that hides scars,

uneven troughs, veins that have discoloured

skin with spidery purple tributaries.

And there are my other selves, stars

for eyes, leaning towards the windows:

the one with drive who hoards hope,

the limp moaner, the sympathetic self

and she whose glinting thoughts leap

from the dark of her riverbed.  None

of these can lower the temperature,

slow or speed up time shrink hatreds

fostered for centuries, feed rain

to thirsty fields, muzzle the snout

of danger or make safe the small

creature always crouched at my core.

Powerless then, have I no power at all?

Pushing a pane to its limit, I catch

the moon.  Across the window bay

a second jumps whitely into

the blue of night.  In the glass I hatch

another and another, bat them from frame

to frame, create a skyful of moons,

ring myself with silver clarity.  Cool

begins to whisker the rim of the room.

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Impossible not to collide with heat.  It rises

from the labyrinth of passages, platforms

and grime-lined tunnels, descends

from the street with the yellowed grainy air,

sticks to underarms, crotches, hair.

The squeal from neverending escalators competes

with his strumming and he longs for the lochs,

their chilling mists, but the darting flecks

of light when giant caterpillars lurch

from the dark to disgorge and gulp bodies

excite him, so does the variousness of people:

a teenager with arrows painted across

her meek face and a string of spikes

on her lumpy chest; a shrunken bloke

who salutes him with age-spotted fingers;

a black woman majestic in an orange robe

who awards him coins from a raffia bag.

As he plays he thinks of climbing moors

and digging for crabs in the rain on the shore

at Tighnabruaich, his mother outshouting the gulls—

Tighnabruaich, lost when he was fifteen...

A girl stops.  He notices her doe eyes first,

the fall of her acorn hair, her mice toes

peering from open sandals, and his heart

leaps at the poppy embroidered on her shirt.

His fingers on the guitar, his rushing blood,

his breath halt.  'Play more,' she begs

in a Glasgow accent, her sudden smile

so radiant he shivers.  He hints at a reel

to disguise his craving.  Her pasty cheeks colour.

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