Wolf Tongue (17 page)

All aboard, it’s party time, with

my averring slut receptionist.

In the land of panty punishment,

she’s king.

I traipsed around in belting sleet

the glades and glens

searching my ghost of Pearl.

Pearl in borage by the tadpole pool.

Pearl on the law, hair lashed backward,

facing the great west wind

from Alston and Nenthead.

Pearl on Noble’s trailer, squinting into the sun,

lambing done for the day.

Then I lost my mind in Sarajevo: twice, every night.

I was all hitched up with a dying beauty, Irma Hadzimuratovic,

across four columns, 12 cems deep, final edition. She was stable

at the time

but I could not stop dreaming of Pearl,

her bare feet driving the brown trout mad.

We were Herculesed out of Sarajevo, terrifically

muscular, Spielberg almost, and

everyone spoke of us in harried whispers,

7, 9, or 10 o’clock tones, we were moved around

like pit pony adverts, double column change please, page nine.

Panic over, the doctor said.

Irma, I know the surgeons have rebuilt your bowels and your back.

Irma, in the agony of the night, in the filthy bombshell bombhell,

under the nostrils of the TV cameras, freak show

brilliance, foaming at the mouth

for the worldwide page of the
Shields Gazette,
baby. Irma,

dying on your little side, arm the colour of fresh milk.

Irma, page one if there’s nowt better, pet,

for this edition only,

I love you today as much as Pearl.

O the rare gold

under the tips of the trees.

October the long shadows, new jobs with the power station

over the law, strange restlessness of winter, ovens

long closed down the dale.

The cold-blooded couriers of planned unemployment

were not then in full station.

Again I woke at four, sky tar-black, then the bull

over Africa, and heard him go, quarter-ironed,

thunder-heeled to the west, to Penrith and Appleby, Olympia

hammering out chrysanthemum and leek show results.

Long time over the law he was back, longing

for my saliva-gushing tongue, my path spittle,

my bright-eyed, brown-eyed face, my grip fingers

when berry collecting, red or blue, in our

upland empire.

I moved my hands in little mitts as best I could.

We strode together daily

over sullen ghosts of lead,

the boom of collapsed shafts,

no longer mastered by men. Cold ovens.

Borage groves sawn down by Jack

in the night.

Eventually I would write, not say,

I loved you, special consonants and vowels

recorded on paper up here

in the high country: white water,

foaming tumblestones, wet and grey days, or

brilliant Aprils and Septembers, shine, shine, shine,

I loved you absolutely all of the time.

Pearl: beautiful lustre, highly prized gem,

precious one, finest example of its kind,

dewdrop, tear of Mary, reduced by attrition

to small-rounded grains.

Pearl in the Borage up to her waist.

Pearl in the wildmint.

Pearl in the wind-spilled water.

Pearl flecked in the sunlight, one

foot here, one there, knuckles on hips

on the stile, all angles and charms.

Pearl adrift in the rain through the whispering burn.

So much sighing at her own distress: a-a-a-a-a-a-.

Pearl looks in the mirror of the molten water,

sticks out her tongue and all you get

is a splash on the path.

I looked into her face and was humbled once again.

Lipstick, she said, on a slate in the rain,

is a complete nobody to me.

I’d like a square meal daily

for me and my mam.

Hammers and pinions, sockets, fatal faces

and broken bones. That was after Pearl.

All mornings the sapphire sky, judge wig clouds, here

to Dunbar, made especially gentle because

turned left towards Ireland and soft rain, air delicious

with scent of borage and thyme, dreaming, dreaming,

dreaming and dreaming of Pearl. She gripped her Co-op coat

and she gripped me, bonds not lost in azure eternity.

When yearning for correct connections

of consonants and vowels, verbal vagaries not excluded,

taking into addition

my often gobsmacked face, when I did not tug

fast enough pointing to the dipper’s nest.

We went to pick rosehips in the upland raw, above

the whitewater and the falling tumblestones.

Blue days raced by like a Hexham builder’s van

late for lunch. We crushed a heady brew

of grass and fern, and loved the slate grey rain.

Surge, surge, I feel today, in the law drizzle, after

tugging my Bar, but my tongue won’t move.

I am just a strange beak, purring with my fruit.

Open my mouth and water fountains down.

I am responsible for the pool on the path.

She had the most amazing eyes in history.

I could never speak.

What good was I to anyone?

I have, I learned later, the emotions

of literate people: joyed when it shined, sun

so fierce in the molten white water it took my breath away.

I washed my hair beneath the ice-cold tumblestones.

At night the wide-awake dream – waterproof

lace-up Dunlop boots.

We stretched our limbs in sheets of rain

on the Killhope or Cushat, thumbing and fingering

rain off our west-facing faces.

Donegal sleet spoke to our faces uniquely,

eyes a furnace of hazel and blue.

Pearl I was and am, standing alone

in the October spokeshadows of the hospital trees.

Pearl I was and am, firm fingered with nails

well cut, red mittens and bright smiles, alone

in the streambed, feldspar and quartz, no words available.

Deftly-ladled ankles, thanks to God, opal

in the law light, toes wetted in the berylmintbed.

Frost on the earth stiffens my clicking backdoor tongue,

and despite the joy of a surging stream

it is late and my soul is dark.

All of you with consonants and vowels

and particular arrangement of phrases and sentences

spoken and written, should have seen my eyebrows

move around, my hands and arms go crazy.

Not least you saw me lick the drizzle

from the aching door post I leaned against,

thinking it would lubricate my poorly-engineered tongue.

Many of you shied away

but it was really me who had the hurt

as the argent rising moon looked in.

I had a little Woolworth blackboard

and the heathens want to tax my ABC.

I move my outstretched fingers gently, natural

in a long-grassed, wind-moved world

under this cobalt sky: O what delight

to hear the dippers up the road

drinking in an April morning.

Yes, yes, it is true: I am always worried,

fretting by the gate at the turn in the lane.

All of that law rain soaking my face

upturned to heaven. Once more a prayer unsaid.

I can be fierce nonetheless

to help hug against the many sores.

Hands, palms, right and left, hardened

by bucket-filling, bucket-fetching,

bringing spring water for mam, slopping out beast clarts.

Sick of it sometimes in the hard dark mornings

and unable to adequately say so

I throw the pails helter-skelter into the stinking drain hole,

smiling quietly for you only.

I tear apart the smart brochures

in my fit, my ABC war.

Wind heaving tonight in the red berries and branches.

Lit windows suddenly revealed in their stone shoulders.

Halt I am with alphabet arrest, up

a height in the snow my croaking throat soaked.

Argent water hurled against the shifting tumblestones.

Fierce bidding for space between me and the gale.

Idiot, the wall said. Person so deficient in mind

as to be permanently incapable of rational conduct;

colloquial: stupid person.

My tongue abandoned with unmade key.

In my brain a terrible country, violent and wild.

All those unspaced paving stones,

all those untravelled distances,

all of those sentences frozen in time.

I can say less than a dog.

Hailstones from Ireland and America thrown in my face,

a duly convicted human full stop.

In fragrant marigold heaven

then I am not so fierce, so tongue-blind, dreaming

of telling dales tales to who will listen,

hands in the borage, toes in the watermint.

The curlew’s cry my daily ode to beauty and delight.

Is not the peewit’s high-up heather song all poetry to me?

My hands are in the clouds again, thumping the sun.

And then I would be a wild, not mild, child,

stamping my feet and cry, cry, cry,

looking up at the mesmeric flicker of adult mouths

as they said A and E and I and U and O, all joined up

in terrible tresses, looking down at me,

not quite forgiving mam my swollen grave inconsequence.

I held myself in a corner laughing

when they moved around their pretty vowels and consonants.

Outside, are they blisters of hurt on the moon?

Or the rims of craters before you fall defeated

with the dogs on your blood?

Will I return forty years from now – 1998 –

to find the chalkboard frozen, nibs

broken, inkwell shards scattered to four walls

by Irish gales, through shattered windows, and

no one ready to pick up a pen to say this:

sentences are not for prisoners only.

Now I will circle and uncircle

my index fingers forever alone

in the pools, spelling and unspelling

our tragic consequences, smiling

then not smiling, sunshine on

borage and the restless waves of bees,

rain and the silenced creak of the

stile gate, because of the mixture

of oil, dripped in the hinges

from the emerald painted neck

of the spoon-armed, thin nozzled

drip-drop oil can – Castrol – and, yes, my dear,

thank you for helping me over.

We walked there and nearby always so very kindly.

Spout, pout, spout. Put my spittle all about.

Bare feet pressing down wet upon the glamorous

deciduous rugs of gold. Otherwise

needles and cones, sheep bones, crisps

and ox-cheek for tea.

Dark despair around benights me.

Above the burn I listen for the turn

of the water over tumblestones,

wag my tongue like a wand

in the law wind. Fierce light

invades my eyes and shut face, closed for the night.

Unable to sleep, despite the hardness of the day,

I cluck and purr.

Why am I ashamed of my permanent silence?

In the brilliant heather, shin deep, I am

a good lass, purring and foaming, friend of green breasted

plover, keen listener to the wind in the wires; all

the bees and beasts understand

my milky fingers and palms.

I whet my whistle in the same pools –

at one with the world.

This white water upland empire, hidden

moss grows in the cracks.

I felt my way there when climbing

the bank, press my head there, soft emerald cushions,

when summer sleep takes on.

The wind runs and roars from the west, from the ferry landings

of Ireland; I listen for the freshly falling tumblestones,

long and long until tears almost drown me

for consonants and vowels, sentences of good measure,

for an understanding of the very word syntax, brought

to my cavernous mouth, practising the words Appleby, Penrith, Shap.

Rosehip plucker, mitts needing repair,

here mam, on the sideboard, longing

for the words capital letter, Ordnance Survey map, to

read the true height of the law, emphasise my longing.

Twine my tongue and ease its itch.

Make the sky so borage blue.

Let the argent stars shine upon my upturned smiling face

and furnish me with hope.

I need all the love I can hold.

Moon afloat, drunken opal shuggy boat

in an ocean of planets and stars.

Fierce clouds gather over me

like a plaid shawl.

Gone, gone, click of quarter irons

to Nenthead, Alston and beyond.

I moved my mouth in the darkness of the kitchen,

spittle poured wrongfully into the pan fat.

Snow once more

in my broken face, reduced

to licking the swollen door post. Just a gargoyle.

Death upon us like a stalking foot-soldier, high

and mighty on the law, bayonet

fixed. A sudden glint there, and that’s it.

Spluttering lard

and strange sparks

ignite my mind, for I am in love

with something I do not know.

It is the brusque wind,

the nearest falling tumblestones

dislodged by the spate, the finest

snowdrops under heaven.