Gillian Clarke Biography

Under the ocean where water falls
over the decks and tilted walls
where the sea come knocking at the great ship's door,
...

For the green turtle with her pulsing burden,
in search of the breeding ground.
For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness.

For the cormorant in his funeral silk,
the veil of iridescence on the sand,
the shadow on the sea.

For the ocean's lap with its mortal stain.
For Ahmed at the closed border.
For the soldier with his uniform of fire.

For the gunsmith and the armourer,
the boy fusilier who joined for the company,
the farmer's sons, in it for the music.

For the hook-beaked turtles,
the dugong and the dolphin,
the whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder.

For the tern, the gull and the restless wader,
the long migrations and the slow dying,
the veiled sun and the stink of anger.

For the burnt earth and the sun put out,
the scalded ocean and the blazing well.
For vengeance, and the ashes of language.
...

Wales spelt Vales
on the brown envelope
from Vites to Llanidloes.
Inside a bundle of pages,
little illuminated manuscripts
of gilded Easter eggs,
scenes from a European spring
we'd all know anywhere,
an afternoon's work from the class in Vites.
Dear Ben', says one,
You are my friend. Write me. Misha.'

Quietly, heads bent over the pages,
the children write the first draft of a poem.
Outside April is all indecision,
daffodils over, lawns blurred with speedwell,
the cherries torn by a sharp rain.
In the photograph, yesterday's Misha is smiling.
A class group grinning, pulling faces.
They wave, thumbs up to the future.
Behind them, in the rendered wall of the school,
are the bullet holes.
...

Three years ago to the hour, the day she was born,
that unmistakable brim and tug of the tide
I'd thought was over. I drove
the twenty miles of summer lanes,
my daughter cursing Sunday cars,
and the lazy swish of a dairy herd
rocking so slowly home.

Something in the event,
late summer heat overspilling into harvest,
apples reddening on heavy trees,
the lanes sweet with brambles
and our fingers purple,
then the child coming easy,
too soon, in the wrong place,

things seasonal and out of season
towed home a harvest moon.
My daughter's daughter
a day old under an umbrella on the beach,
Latecomer at summer's festival,
and I'm hooked again, life sentenced.
Even the sea could not draw me from her.

This year I bake her a cake like our house,
and old trees blossom
with balloons and streamers.
We celebrate her with a cup
of cold blue ocean,
candles at twilight, and three drops of,
probably, last blood.
...

I think of her sometimes when I lie in bed,
falling asleep in the room I have made in the roof-space
over the old dark parlwr where she died
alone in winter, ill and penniless.
Lighting the lamps, November afternoons,
a reading book, whisky gold in my glass.
At my typewriter tapping under stars
at my new roof window, radio tunes
and dog for company. Or parking the car
where through the mud she called her single cow
up from the field, under the sycamore.
Or looking at the hills she looked at too.
I find her broken crocks, digging her garden.
What else do we share, but being women?
...