STRONG WOMEN
 
The Visitor
 
She was dressed in white fatigues
like a waning moon that’s paling
the world into black and white.
On her face a silhouette
of a tree shaking in the wind.
 
She sat with her back to me
on a stone bench, and chattered
in monotone on matters
unknown to my world, as though
nothing could be more natural.
 
Her presence was uncertain
like a snowdrop in autumn,
or an artificial flower
that has been rained on. The blush
of emotion had long been drained.
 
She wraps herself in paper
made from the bones of strangers.
When she turns around to me
her face is without features.
Her eye is on something else.
 
Jane Welsh’s Wedding Testament
1826
 
The whip hand of his balked
body shredded to stalks
the gone-to-seed tulips:
 
with petals on his lips
he spent the best part of
our nuptial night of love
 
laying waste the flower beds,
while I caught up with Coeleb’s
The Search for Happiness.
 
The pleasures of the flesh!
Poring over my mahogany
writing desk, with cold tea
 
bathing my eyes, I wept
for two whole hours. Then slept.
Waking I could not stem
 
the flow from the steel pen
he gave me, a wedding gift.
Having never really lived,
 
in strait-laced prose, I wrote
him a short farewell note;
frenzied with ennui, bit
 
my lip, mounted a brute
of a horse that could not
do anything but trot
 
and rode thirty-three miles
to escape from Carlyle’s
flowery passion and wit.
 
But how was he taking it?
On the saddle I burnt
to know, had to return
 
as fast as the beast could,
before leaving him for good.
 
The Sack of Madame Bovary
 And The Blind Man’s Song
 
1. So much for rapturous embraces.
In the hotel room she unlaces
her boots, and finds a vase for the flower.
Demon lovers have had enough of her.
 
‘Sometimes a girl in the heat of the day
With dreams of love gets carried away.
 
Love is a sack to carry around
perfumes and nightwear. Nothing profound,
purely practical, and it has a strap
for the shoulder to swing on your back.
 
‘Her ardent fingers pluck ears of blé
Before they’re ripe and make a nosegay.
 
In daydreams the silks and scents suspend
in the air. Waking up’s a husband
and child. Or finding yourself alone
with a billet doux. Time to go home.
 
‘And leaning over the garden wall
where all the young men are playing ball,
 
You empty out the sack on the bed,
and try it on, worn over your head.
The mirror - you’re not hoodwinked - says hold
your breath: that way you won’t have to grow old.
 
‘She throws to the wind her harvest gift,
Which blows it back, and her short skirts lift...’    
 
2. You saw yourself as the heroine,
in a true romance, the deathbed scene.
But your last breath came with a wild laugh.
A ribald ditty, your epitaph.
 
Before the blind man began to sing
racked by rat’s bane, gangrene set in.
No time for tender looks. The child’s cry
said it all. An ugly way to die. 
 
‘Tread softly on my beloved wife.’
The words on your tomb weren’t true to life,
Poor Charles sees you crumble to dust
in his arms, and follow you he must.   
           
3. Berthe now works in a cotton mill,
spinning out her life at the wheel,
weaving into sackcloth the coarse thread
to bag ripe corn for her daily bread. 
 
Mrs. Constance Mozart Shows an Ankle
 
I have a way with furbelows and flounces,
and give myself airs, flighty, but down to earth.
I’m a fantasy and fugue, which nicely bounces
along making waves on dry land, and well worth
every florin I can’t save, for he’s the one
with the pompadour, and expensive to run. 
I come free. My light soprano saves hiring
for the ‘Word Is Made Flesh’ some wailing siren
in his C Minor Mass. And now he’s jealous.
I need to dance, and he doesn’t. What’s the fuss?
Some idiot tosses me around in a rush
of passion, powder and perfume. God help us. 
I know he’s the money. I should be his mouse.
But, between babies, I have to get out of the house.
 
Mrs. Schubert, a Gift to Franz
 
He tries to impress me by imitating Beethoven,
and I say to him just be yourself, Franz. You’re behove then
to keep up your strength with regular meals (you like your food),
and a Turkish bath once a week. It will help you smell good.
And so, he becomes Joseph Haydn, orders me about
as though this life is a route march, and I begin to doubt
marriage suits him, let alone me. I threaten a divorce.
Since then, he is my angel boy, still it needed brute force.
Now we share musical moments together. No kinder.
Ah, the sins of his youth. He’s free to compose his ‘Winter-
reise’ and ‘Erl King’ without dread of visiting the worst on
innocents. We live only for the beautiful, Die schone,
and will die young, carried away by a common complaint
(everybody has lice). And his music makes him a saint.   
 
Mrs White’s Power Walk
 
So firmly placed on the ground that she owns,
mother hen moves along at a pig’s trot.
The sway of her hips is matter of fact.
Enough Whites to go on with. In good hands
too, but one wears knitted gloves to be sure.
The shoes are no nonsense, leather, oxfords.
The further up she goes the thinner she gets.
That accounts for the wide-brimmed hat turned down.
Her hair’s not going to disappear, quite yet,
but the horn-rimmed glasses are a trompe l’oeil.
Nothing is missed. Her vision is lateral. 
‘How’s everything’ she says without stopping.
‘All’s right with the world if you don’t complain.’
My answer wafts in her wake and is lost. 
Still, it’s a given between sensible people.
‘Not having a soul is out of the question.’
she once told me. And I believe her. Though mine
is not so rhetorical. I hear bells,
and wonder if she’s making for the Church.
 
Madam Sissie
 
Every day, without fail,
or success, Madame
Sissie pushes herself
up and down the town,
bearing a basket
in each hand,
full of stones
on the way up,
and of earth
on the way down.
She is building
a monumental
disaster above,
and an earthly
paradise below.
 
A Stop Off in the Gaeltacht
 
The smell of tar before the gravel is laid.
Mine was the first car in the village, he said.
I'd to be patient with the fair day cattle.
Father Rourke spoke from the altar. 'The devil
is back from England and opened a dance hall
in Inch. Coming back late you could hit a wall.'
Sure, enough it happened, but after the time
I met herself. In broad daylight, my combine
came out blind and the youngsters hadn't a chance.
Out all night, 'twas said, in the Ballroom of Romance.
So much for young love, the prospect of weddings.
The girls all left. But why dwell on the old things.
The young are back and here is my wife, Jasmine,
still flowering in my heart. Our marriage has been
a scented garden by the road to nowhere,
without issue other than gray in her hair.
And now she takes the wheel in spite of her age
since I killed the dog backing out of the garage.
Her pills are working better than mine, for sure.
In our old age nobody round here seems poor.
Or speaks the language, but who’s complaining.
The one thing that hasn't changed, it's still raining.
 
Nine Ways of Thinking About My Mother
 
Though my hair’s in despair
when caught out in the rain
hatless, I don’t complain.
Je pense à ma mére
 
When knocked in the gutter
by a white van, the bike
and my bones feel alright
if I think of my mother.
 
When amour-propre rears
at a slight to my pride
so to put it aside
je pense à ma mére
 
When someone or other
throws mud in my face
I wipe it off with good grace.
And think of my mother.
 
When I sulk in my lair
of petty resentments
to come to my senses
je pense à ma mére.
 
When I lose my rudder
and the boat’s in a spin
I’m glad I can swim.
It was thanks to my mother.
 
When no one seems to care
whether I live or die
I look to the sky…
Je pense à ma mére
 
When people think I’m a nutter,
and they aren’t far wrong,
I whistle a sad song,
and think of my mother.
 
When hells-fires declare
themselves, and I’m going down in flames,
I hear a voice say ‘James’
je pense à ma mére