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Ancestors               For Virginia

         The Bone           After Ovid

 

Ancestors

 

Each time I lay a place

the cutlery will be changed

as if something fiddles with the setting,

adjusting flowers, splashing scents,

replacing the sneeze of mildew

with saffron and vanilla,

wiping dust from the gloss of fruits.

 

And in all that I am careless

the cupboard of stale bread

lives again with warm yeast,

sour milk sweetens,

shirts dry in the rain.

 

There is always a light touch

to our heels, guiding our steps,

as I kiss you in the starlight.

And I notice the gift of miracles

in the trees of the dying orchard,

the soft cork of rotten apples

hardening with new skins.

 

When you enter the room

a low burning candle adds to itself,

the wine level rising up the bottle.

The waiting bed already

has a pucker in new sheets,

a dent in the fresh pillow as if

they want to try love once more,

holding the sunset through the night,

blushing our skins.

 

As if this first falling in love

draws them here, ancestors

finding their selves in our play-

those can’t-help-it,

home-sick, love-sick things

needing it all again.

 

 

Stephen Duncan

prizewinner, The Bridport Prize;

published in collection, Ghost-Walking, 2004,

Smith/Doorstop Books, ISBN 978-1-902382-65-4

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For Virginia

 

The orange tile-lino and ochre walls,

rosy evening heat and your sleeping body

filled the tall mirror of your bedsitter

as I rolled my own, leafing Rizzla papers

between smooth fingers- straggling tobacco

and loose grass at each end

to be teased and nipped. Or the time

I rolled ciggies for you on the small

of your back, the plane of your sacrum iliac,

tickle of finger tips down your spine.

Your cough and shiver.

 

Before I gave up there were the delights

of picking flakes from your navel,

adoring your bottom and hips, the way

your fat gave with an ocean’s ripple

as I turned a perfect cylinder. Or when

I rolled you the looser sleeve of a spliff,

sealed with a transparent saliva kiss,

there was that pensive concentrated moment

before you disappeared behind the dragon plume

from your nostrils, rushing into the greedy dream:

a windowless warehouse bonded by the docks,

dark vaults stacked high with bales of pale leaves.

 

The yellowed paintwork with deep hearts

of nicotine burns, the crumble of ash

between your sheets, hiss of a loose hair

on the hot tip, there was our rush and high

as the sun transformed the unmade bed

into snow and gold. The better part of love

you claimed was the silence afterwards,

in the depth of our inhaling breath.

One day I decided just like that.

There is still some part of me

addicted to your scent, what we gave up.

 

 

Stephen Duncan

prize winner, Arvon International Poetry Competition;

published in collection, Ghost-Walking, , 2004,

Smith/Doorstop Books, ISBN 978-1-902382-65-4

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The Bone

 

Drinking me under the table

on our first date you rummaged

in your bag for cigarettes

as I wedged myself into the corner of the snug,

focussing across the Guiness

on your thin beauty and flow of your finds:

half a Mars bar, a carmine lipstick.

And as if this was to be a good sign

you placed in my hands a velvet pouch,

nap caught with the fluff,

and I could feel inside a fragment,

the puzzle of a rotten golf ball

or just a stone. You revealed it to me:

your father’s arthritic hip,

the lump of bone neatly sawn by a surgeon

pitted with the fine craters of a distant world.

 

A silver casket on the mantelpiece of your room,

the ash of his body in a transparent sachet,

you wanted me to hold him-

the dry grit of a desert through the plastic.

You still linger, sleepless,

in the pink mirage of the great deserts

where all bones must go.

You claimed to drink like him

and holding mine wanted to know

what it was like to have balls,

what it was like. I lay in your pink sheets,

a sensation of silk and sand, listening,

lingering in the pale before dawn

where fathers come to stroll.

 

 

Stephen Duncan

prize winner, The Bridport Prize;

published in collection, Ghost-Walking, , 2004,

Smith/Doorstop Books, ISBN 978-1-902382-65-4

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After Ovid

 

1

As I blow and ruffle

the down of hair

growing in a fine crown

from your coccyx,

you arch your back

as a sapling does to the wind.

And if I look close

a branching pattern

climbs each vertebrae

to the nape of your neck

before leafing into your pony-tail.

 

2

Ovid knows the times of change,

the tease in the first breath

of an approaching storm, flood or fire.

Choose carefully your chapter before sleep,

you could wake as something else.

 

When I wake you drift on,

the tail of his satyr

in the wash-and-care label

curling from the back

of your knickers.

 

3

Even as I touch you

leaves are veining under your fingernails,

new bark still smooth and tender

has a beauty blemish, bud and twig.

 

I’ll have to find somewhere to plant you,

hire a drill to cut through concrete,

take out the floor, glaze a section of our roof,

research the right soil to fill the hole,

the fertiliser for the lustre of your leaves,

your blossom scent.

 

Our future lies in the growth

of your horizontal branch,

next year it will be strong enough

to take my sleeping weight.

And in your first season you present me

with our first fruit.

Ovid would be proud.

 

 

Stephen Duncan

published in collection, Ghost-Walking, , 2004,

Smith/Doorstop Books, ISBN 978-1-902382-65-4

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