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watch
video: Alwyn Marriage reading her poem
Possibly a Pomegranate
2nd prize in the Bedford Open Poetry Competition,
2011
published in The Interpreter’s House, 2011
The
clue lies in the lady's toe
On
visiting Henry Moore’s sculpture
in Dumfries and Galloway
On a
Scottish hillside the bronze statue
of an
archetypal king and queen
braves
the elements,
observing,
perhaps, a thread
of
slit-eyed sheep winding up the hill,
with
careful, delicate tread,
yellow marks like lichen
on their rumps, their gaze
full of vague unanswered questions.
My mind, also, struggles to explain
the different texture of the metal on
the king’s right knee. While all the rest
is stippled, rippled, riven
in a pattern to catch the varying
shades of light, his knee is smooth.
What point was the sculptor making
as he carefully fashioned this
one unblemished surface?
Only as
I descend the hill
does a
clear-cut memory emerge
from
long ago, as I recall
a
constant stream of pilgrims
filing
past a marble statue of
the
queen of heaven,
the
slight roughness of the stone
contrasting
sharply with the smooth
and
shining toe
which
generations of the pious
have
knelt to fondle and to kiss,
wearing
away the awkward corners
and
bringing out a deeper shine. The line
of sheep
has reached the sculpture now,
and as I
watch
each
sidles up to the impassive king
and
meditatively rubs her rump
against
his knee.
Alwyn
Marriage
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