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Mary
MacRae 1942 - 2009
Mary
MacRae website
** April 2018, Martyn Crucefix: The Poems of Mary MacRae **
“I knew Mary MacRae as a member of a poetry workshop we both attended in north London. She came to writing poetry late and published just two collections – As Birds Do (2007) and (posthumously) Inside the Brightness of Red (2010) both from Second Light Publications. Her poem Jury …” (follow link above to read whole article)
** Poetry Society ‘Summer Reads 2014’:
Elizabeth
Soule recommends Inside
the Brightness of Red **
previously published in Magma,
23, 2002;
in anthology Entering the Tapestry,
2003,
Enitharmon, ISBN
1 900564 48 3
Life Story
Night, and you step out into
blackness, over
the side of the silent vessel,
dreading that you
or your boots might slip and
miss the rung, one
false move your last. Between
above and below
you hang breathless, locked into
history—
and this is what you chose, what
you want.
No moon, no stars—though
light’s not what you want—
only a sound like a thumb
rubbing over
corrugated card as the men in
your story
run down the ladder, loaded with
kit. And you
feel rather than see, where the
man below
you wavers, shifts his pack, now
there’s no-one.
‘Dropped like a stone,’ I hear
you say, ‘just one
splash and he’d gone.’ A small
smile. You want
to cry, can’t quite believe the
man below
the water wasn’t you, rehearse
it over
and over again to convince
yourself that you
survived the war, came home to
tell your story.
It comes back to me now: hearing
your story
I saw what you saw, clear as
glass, how someone
plummeted down, but whether it
was you,
or him, or someone else, I
didn’t want
to know. Slid through a door
that closed over
his head, from dark above to
dark below.
Whoever that man was who plunged
below,
if you’re the secret sharer of
his story
then I’m yours. And the story
isn’t over;
when you dropped like a stone
you left me one
part short, however much I
wanted—want—
to understand the plot and why I
miss you.
Taller than life, younger than
in death, you
come to visit me now from way
below
the spirit-level of dream; won’t
speak. I want
to ask if you can love me—that
old story—
but don’t; put my arms around
you one
last time and say, I love you,
over and over.
I conjured you from below by
telling your story
and then I saw our two stories
are one:
can I want yours to end before
mine’s over?
Mary MacRae
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