A Child's Christmas In Wales

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

Cat's Dream

How neatly a cat sleeps, sleeps with its paws and its posture, sleeps with its wicked claws, and with its unfeeling blood, sleeps with all the rings- a series of burnt circles- which have formed the odd geology of its sand-colored tail. I should like to sleep like a cat,

45 Mercy Street

In my dream, drilling into the marrow of my entire bone, my real dream, I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill searching for a street sign - namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the Back Bay.

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage, that began without harm, scatters into debris on the shore, and a friend from school drops

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

At The Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses an old man sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of codfish it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water. The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up

September On Jessore Road

Millions of babies watching the skies Bellies swollen, with big round eyes On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts Millions of fathers in rain Millions of mothers in pain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of sisters nowhere to go

06 And Silence Is What I Choose

He was as old as my grandfather and I, just twelve. Marriage meant nothing to me, not even a new cheeram. He lived in penance and I, just a little child, tended the aashram, Never cared for, not even acknowledged of my existence. Years of spring visited me, uncalled for, for life never bloomed In the aashram. New yearnings of my body intrigued me. He never cast even a glance though I longed for him to caress me Kiss and fondle me, albeit with his wrinkled hands and quivering fingers.

Angels Of The Love Affair

'Angels of the love affair, do you know that other, the dark one, that other me? ' 1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime, that green mama who first forced me to sing, who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime of brown where I was beggar and she was king? I said, 'The devil is down that festering hole.'

Manners

For a Child of 1918 My grandfather said to me as we sat on the wagon seat, "Be sure to remember to always speak to everyone you meet." We met a stranger on foot. My grandfather's whip tapped his hat. "Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day."

The Idea Of Ancestry

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand- fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk.I know their dark eyes, they know mine.I know their style, they know mine.I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee. I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,

Alone

A single rose with thorny stem On mother nature`s tattered hem Which no-one cares to steal away So left to wither and decay And just one tear-dropp on the hand Brushed upon the dusty sand To be consumed into the earth As one which has no lasting worth

As Life Was Five

Portate bien, behave yourself you always said to me. I behaved myself when others were warm in winter and I stood out in the cold. I behaved myself when others had full plates and I stared at them hungrily, never speaking out of turn, existing in a shell of good white behavior with my heart a wet-feathered

Identity Card

Write down ! I am an Arab And my identity card number is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth will come after a summer Will you be angry? . Write down! I am an Arab Employed with fellow workers at a quarry

Things I Didn'T Know I Loved

it's 1962 March 28th I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train night is falling I never knew I liked night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain I don't like comparing nightfall to a tired bird I didn't know I loved the earth can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it

A Hymn To Frost

Old leaves have no defence against the wind. A gray hawk is October's inner cry. The bells of Salem church play elegies. Distance becomes a single snowflake's fall. The mood is blue as autumn's last frost flowers, Small bits of heaven hidden in the grass. Tom Roach who called them by their favored name, Went home across the green fields long ago.

.....Staring Out The Window.....

............sitting here in the stillness .............................staring ...............staring out the window ...at darkness my friend and my foe. . ............staring out the window .........................listening ...........to the grandfather clock ........................tick tock ..

Clearances

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984 She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and the hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen,

My Other Love

He’s active as quicksilver, Ageless as the sun, Agile as a stream, And alert as a bird in springtime. Holding eachother's hand, We’d walk down the stream, He’d hold me so close, As if I could get lost- As illusive as a dream—

Manuelzinho

[Brazil. A friend of the writer is speaking.] Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)— a sort of inheritance; white, in your thirties now, and supposed to supply me with vegetables, but you don't; or you won't; or you can't get the idea through your brain— the world's worst gardener since Cain.