Ruth Sophia Padel

The ground verdigris, fluffy with young mosquitoes. Waters
as sacred as these, as fatted with reeds. Bronze palm planted
to Sun. Lizards, Nile alligators, hindquarters
...

Water, moonlight, danger, dream.
Bronze urn, angled on a tree root: one
Slash of light, then gone. A red moon
Seen through clouds, or almost seen.
...

I was with Special Force, blue-X-ing raids
to OK surfing on the Colonel's birthday.
Operation Ariel: we sprayed Jimi Hendrix
loud from helis to frighten the slopes
...

Flamingo silk. New ruff,
the ivory ghost
of a halter. Chestnut curls,
...

We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.

These icicles aren't going to last for ever

Suspended in the ultra violet rays of a Dumfries sun.
...

(After Pushkin)
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk
And passionate cold feet
...

Then spoke the thunder, shattering the looming blackness of our national life. The rumble that breaks a spell of the dry season

- Saro-Wiwa, 'The Storm Breaks'
...

He's gone. She can't believe it, can't go on. She's going to give up painting. So she paints Her final canvas, total-turn-off
Black. One long
...

That fox you didn't know you had
In your front garden
Is craning his velour neck
From the hedge at two in the morning
To see what he doesn't often get a glimpse of,

That moonspark
On a glass of Scotch
He doesn't often smell

Being more at home with fish-heads
And the rinds of Emmental:
Identifying, to his fox-astonishment,
A tumbler doing the rounds of his own beat
About heart-height in the dark.
...

The first day he cut rosewood for the back,
bent sycamore into ribs and made a belly
of mahogany. Let us go early to the vineyards
and see if the vines have budded.
The sky was blue over the Jezreel valley
and the gilt dove shone
above the Church of the Annunciation.
The second day, he carved a camel-bone base
for the fingerboard.
I sat down under his shadow with delight.

The third day, he made a nut of sandalwood,
and a pickguard of black cherry.
He damascened a rose of horn
with arabesques
as lustrous as under-leaves of olive beside the sea.
I have found him whom my soul loves.
He inlaid the soundhole with ivory swans,
each pair a Valentine of entangled necks,
and fitted tuning pegs of apricot
to give a good smell when rubbed.

The fourth was a day for cutting
high strings of camel-gut. His left hand
shall be under my head.
For the lower course, he twisted copper strings
pale as tarmac under frost.
He shall lie all night between my breasts.
The fifth day he laid down varnish.
Our couch is green and the beams of our house
are cedar and pine. Behind the neck
he put a sign to keep off the Evil Eye.

My beloved is a cluster of camphire
in the vineyards of Engedi
and I watched him whittle an eagle-feather, a plectrum
to celebrate the angel of improvisation
who dwells in clefts on the Nazareth ridge
where love waits. And grows, if you give it time.
Set me as a seal upon your heart.
On the sixth day the soldiers came
for his genetic code.
We have no record of what happened.

I was queueing at the checkpoint to Galilee.
I sought him and found him not.
He'd have been in his open-air workshop -
I called but he gave me no answer -
the selfsame spot
where Jesus stood when He came from Capernaum
to teach in synagogue, and townsfolk tried
to throw Him from the rocks. Until the day break
and shadows flee away
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh.

The seventh day we set his wounded hands
around the splinters. Come with me from Lebanon
my spouse, look from the top
of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens.
On the eighth there were no more days.
I took a class in carpentry and put away the bridal rug.
We started over
with a child's ‘oud bought on eBay.
He was a virtuoso of the ‘oud
and his banner over me was love.
...

Shrieks from above, on deck. One sailor lashed
by the cat, twenty-five times for Drunkenness.
Three strands of rope, unravelled into three
("the Trinity of Trinities" sets sinners on the path
to righteousness) and then replaited for a more
effective wound. Drum rolls - all hands to witness

punishment. Silence as tails are disentangled.
In the Bay of Biscay, the naturalist lies retching
on the floor: trying not to picture barbed knots
biting a cross on every spine and shoulderblade,
a glary scarlet scribble on open flesh again, again,
again. Thirty-one lashes for Neglect of Duty;

Disobeying Orders, thirty-four. Forty-four -
that's Drunkenness with Insolence. The Captain
says he must establish order from the start.
Leg irons on five more. Till we passed Teneriffe,
says the Captain's log, he was terribly sick.
"The misery," he tells his journal, "is excessive."
...

Probably some error in the argument here. Should be grateful if pointed out.
Lurcher puppies, brown and gold, playing in the straw
of a farmyard. Ears, teeth and tails. The individual
in society. Tussle, flight, invention, fight.

"It cannot be doubted that they have free will.
If they, then all animals - even an oyster:
whose free will must result from the limits of shell,
pulp, valve. Free will is to mind what chance

is to matter, changing the body's arrangements.
So may free will make changes, too, in Man."
And the mind, belvedere of the body?
"Beyond doubt, part of the process."

No deity, no lutes of paradise. Only the smell of tall grass,
tissue adaptive as light from a star
and quick cells vivid to change in the struggle for life.
...

May: the Dyad Moon

One cub has died on the road. Magpies
have eaten her. The last two play-learn, eat solid food
and follow their parents through dusk. Twins
of the Greek night sky, Castor and Pollux, shine
through damp London nights as earthworms
leave burrows. Parents spoon crane-flies off lawns
with their tongues, teach young to deadhead the bins

on Bemerton and Havelock, lift black plates
for frankincense, rot-lustre gems
of sunk baconfat. To strip flaking bark
for silverheave woodlice, listen
for worm-bristles rasping through grass.
If worm-tails are gripping the burrow -
even a worm can be frantic - the grey-black lips

pull gently taut - and pause - and pull again.
A technique used by bait-collecting fishermen.
...

To be thermally, forever, stable. (That surprised you.) Harder than it seems,
But thermo-regulation is their thing. When the air
Is colder than the water, October to late March,
They keep to dens below the water table.
Away from them, caught by a cold snap, they become
Completely numb, incapable of moving. All they do is breathe
Surface-oxygen through air-holes. Temperature is their goal,
Their god and good. During winter, they take no food.

They pick an under-hang of lake or stream which will
Stay filled with water when the spring freshet recedes.
Listen to Mr Ned. "See him," he says, "back out of that hole
He's making burdened with dollops of soft mud
In his mouth and on his tail, pushing a mass of mud
With webbed hind feet. He's one busy alligator, sweeping his tail
From side to side. And trees round gator holes grow
Darker green, their roots enriched by droppings."

For water's everything. The darkest alligators come, thought Ned,
From Tupelo Gum Swamp where the flow is black,
Dyed by its maker's hand - the bark, roots, fallen leaves
Of Tupelo Gum. Gator holes, especially of older beasts
Who, weary, cannot want to move,
Run a long way underground. That's how they manage. They survive,
When they can't bear what's outside. They know, whatever knowing is
For them, they'll have to face the winter. So, they dig.
...

After Pushkin
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night, timbrels, gongs
And gamelans. And one neat pen, one candle
Puckering its life out hour by hour. Is "Tell
Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't
Wish this unlived - this world on fire, on storm
Alert, till a shepherd's song
Outside, some hyper-active yellowhammer, bulbul,
Wren, amplified in hills and woods, tells her to bestow
A spot of notice on the dawn.

"I'm writing to you. Well, that's it, that's everything.
You'll laugh, but you'll pity me too. I'm ashamed of this.
I meant to keep it quiet. You'd never have known, if -
I wish - I could have seen you once a week. To mull over, day
And night, the things you say. Or what we say together.
But word is, you're misogynist. Laddish. A philanderer
Who says what he doesn't mean (that's not how you come across
To me), who couldn't give a toss for domestic peace -
Only for celebrity and showing off -
And won't hang round in a provincial zone
Like this. We don't glitter. Though we do,
Warmly, truly, welcome you.

"Why did you come? I'd never have set
Eyes on a star like you, or blundered up against
This crazed not-sleeping, hour after hour
In the dark. I might have got the better of
My clumsy fury with constraint, my fret
For things I lack all lexica and phrase-book art
To get straight in my head. I might have been a faithful wife,
A mother. But that's all done with. This is Fate.
God. Sorted. Here I am - yours, to the last breath.
I couldn't give my heart to anyone else.
My life till now has been a theorem, to demonstrate
How right it is to love you. This love is love to death.

"I knew you anyway. I loved you, I'm afraid,
In my sleep. Your eyes, that denim-lapis, grey-sea,
Grey-green blue, that Chinese fold of skin
At the inner corner, that shot look
Bleeping ‘vulnerable' under the screensaver charm,
Kept me alive. Every cell, every last gold atom
Of your body, was engraved in me
Already. Don't tell me that was dream! When you came in,
Staring round in your stripy brocade
Jacket, I nearly fainted, I was flame. I recognised
The you I'd always listened to - alone, when I wrote,
Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm.

"Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent
Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you
My guardian angel? Or is this arrant
Seeming: hallucination, thrown up by
That fly engineering a novel does, so
Beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad?
Are there ways of dreaming I don't know?
Too bad. My soul has made its home
In you. I'm here and bare before you: shy,
In tears. But if I didn't heft my whole self up and hold it there -
A crack-free mirror - loving you, or if I couldn't share it,
Set it out in words, I'd die.

"I'll wait to hear from you. I must. Please let me hope.
Give me one look, from eyes I hardly dare
To look back at. Or scupper my dream
By scolding me. I've given you rope
To hang me: tell me I'm mistaken. You're so much in
The world; while I just live here, busy with harvest, songs,
And books. That's not complaint. We live such different lives.
So . . . this is the end. It's taken all night.
I'm scared to read it back; I'm faint
With shame and fear. But this is what I am. My crumpled bed,
My words, my open self. All I can do is trust
The whole damn lot of it to you."

She sighs. The paper trembles as she presses down
The pink wax seal. Outside, a milk mist clears
From the shimmering valley. If I were her guardian
Angel, I'd divide myself. One half would holler
Don't! Stay on an even keel! Don't dollop over
All you are, to a man who'll go to town
On his next little fling. If he's entranced today
By the way you finger your throat inside its collar,
Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Nicole, Jane. But then I'd whisper
Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write.
His funeral, if he's not up to it. What we feel
Is mortal, and won't come again.

So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl
Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!")
Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars:
The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all
Her life, where mother tells the serfs to sing
While picking, so they can't hurl
The odd gog into their mouths. No one could spy
Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time. Her cheeks
Are simmering fire.
We're talking iridescence, a Red Admiral's last tremble
Before the avid schoolboy plunks his net.
Or imagine a leveret

Like the hare you shot, remember, at the country house,
Which ran round screaming like a baby?
Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn,
While the hunter (as it might be, you) stomps his Hush
Puppies through dead brush. Everything's quiet.
She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers
Under the evening samovar, filling
The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong
Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E
In the window's black reflection, one finger
Tendrilling her own breath on the glass.
Like putting a shell to your ear to hear the sea

When it's really your own red little sparkle, the echo
Of marching blood. She's asking a phantom world
Of pearled-up mist for proof
That her man exists: that gamelans and timbrels
Won't evade her. But now, among
The kitchen garden's rose-haws, mallow, Pernod-
Coloured pears, she unhooks herself thorn by thorn
For the exit aria. For fade-out. Suddenly there he is
In the avenue, the man she's written to - Charon
Gazing at her with blazing eyes! Darth Vader
From Star Wars. She's trapped, in a house she didn't realise
Was burning. Her letter was a gate to the inferno.
...

Her once-red head locked
In a tank of steam.
Her face, foxing down into nothing
Saying "All my beauty's gone."
She's holding on

To your wrist, your bare arm,
Through a shock hedge of wiring, spliced
Every which way to intestines
And rationing herself to Seven Up
(Plus morphine) on the rocks.

So cold, under the striplight
Night after night
Through all the carry-ons:
The bubble-cloud of rosaries,
The small-hours foraging for ice

In the hospital kitchen. But so proud
Of this big cuckoo she
Brought into the world, as you
Sang with her, day after glary day,
All the words of all the Jim Reeves songs

Or any you rustled up between you,
Anything anyone there could sing about -
"Tipperary", "Star of the Sea" -
To ease that inward
Journey, launch her out.
...

This isn't happening

Play it down
Dress it in Levis or a babygro

Buy it a hamburger
Buy it a drink

Put it out with the cat
Make a credit card arrangement
With the taxidermist on Upper Street

Book it a package deal
Where icicles go

For their holiday in spring
This isn't happening

And it's doing it so fast.
...

When he came down from the platform
And walked out,
Everyone clapping,

His eyes as he passed her were proud
And shy of being proud

And glad she was there.
She was a lightning photographer
Handed the secret of storms.
...