To view poems from each of these books, click on the cover

 Selima Hill: Poems from
TREMBLING HEARTS IN THE BODIES OF DOGS

THE DOG-MAN
(for Janie)

But something is certainly moving
down at the lair-like, scented, suddenly-occupied
other end of the room -
the dog-man from next door has come to play the piano,
to pour out his horrible notes
like a deluge of ripe, exhausted plums:
they stick in her hair
and mess up her ironed, imported, daisy-spangled cotton dress
that glares out sententiously
like one of those little flower-gardens
harbour-masters and sandwich-bar-owners
dedicate their lives to
with the kind of murderous possessiveness
small seaside towns
obsessed by being the nicest
go over the top with;
she's pressed against by plums as big as radiators,
emperors,
sweating Clydesdales,
suicide
over-heated Japanese 'bath-houses for sexual relief'
she's read about, and puzzled over, and tried not to see herself in -
plums buzzing with bright wasps
that cross and recross the precinct of her chair
like a switched-on electric fence
she can't move through.
Her eyes are glazed,
and her face could be basked on by lizards it's so still.
She's mistress of the art of frozenness,
hiding at the side of herself
like a pilgrim bathing in the Ganges
being cruised past by loudspeaker-toting boats;
like a diseased tomato;
like a brain-damaged child strapped in a van
who's watching, or anyway parked in front of,
an open-air, wrap-around, drive-in,
completely incomprehensible picture-show,
and the van has a sliding door
that might accidentally slither open any minute
and send a whole avalanche of untouchable things
that have no business to be there,
and should never be seen,
tumbling out into the open
like mutes or brains;
and at night,
when I'm nearly asleep,
I sometimes come across her -
vicious, hunched-up and incapacitated,
still hugging her hairless awkward little thighs.


CROCUSES

And is her father with her on the lawn?
Absolutely not.
She needs to be quite alone.
And what is she drinking, on the lawn?
Hot tea.
And what is she writing?
Things that have made her angry.
And has a certain bunch of flowers
made her angry?
Yes.

He stepped out
into the sunlight,
still in his nightclothes,
and made his way
down the hill
to the orchard.
Her first gold crocuses
were pushing up like fish
(she wanted no one to see them)
between striped wasps on plums.

And what sharp implement
was he carrying down with him?
Scissors.
And if he were to cut himself -
remember he's an old man now -
would she come running down the bank with sheets
to stanch the bleeding?
No, she would not.
And will she forgive him?
Never.


MY FIRST BRA

A big brown bear
is knocking at the door:

he wants to borrow a dress
and matching knickers.

The smell of lilac
smothers me like wool;

beyond the lawns,
I hear my naked sister

crying in the nettles
where I threw her:

nobody else is having
my first bra.


THE FOWLERS OF THE MARSHES

Three thousand years ago
they were fowling in the marshes
around Thebes - men in knotted skirts
and tiered faïence collars,
who avoided the brown crocodile,
and loved the ibis, which they stalked
with long striped cats on strings,
under the eye of Nut, the goddess of the sky.

My mother's hushed peculiar world's the same:
she haunts it like the fowlers of the marshes,
tiptoeing gaily into history, sustained by gods
as strange to me as Lady Nut, and Anubis,
the oracular, the jackal-masked.
When I meet her at the station, I say
Hello, Mum! and think Hello, Thoth,
This is the Weighing of the Heart.


THREE SISTERS

Three sisters, like three hens, eye one another;
six hands, like sparrows, þutter up and down
making wreaths for you, the sisters' brother,
from winter þowers whose petals have turned brown,
from rosemary and basil's grey and blue,
from lavender, and ivy from the apple;
from snowdrops tied in ribbon, berried yew -
six hands like hymns; the kitchen like a chapel
where hens and rabbits wander in and out,
and þowers and fruit trees grow between the stones:
three lemons for the mousse; a lily; trout,
ten tickling Þngers checking it for bones.
Chop, chop. That's it. There's nothing we can do.
A þy. A knife. The sickly smell of rue.


THE HARE

Beside the river in the dead of night,
a cry, and then another, like a spell,
turns the darkened beeches into light,
the silence of the woods into a bell;
and in the cottage on the moonlit hill
a woman shivers in her narrow bed
to hear the hare; and then the hare is still;
she feels its dusty fur against her head,
its ginger paws, that panic like trapped þies,
or tiny Þsh that see, or sense, dry land;
she feels it move; she hears its wild cries
glittering inside her ear like sand:
he's lost inside the forest of her hair,
and Þnds, and steals, his mother's kisses there.


THE RAM

He jangles his keys in the rain
and I follow like a lamb.
His house is as smoky as a dive.
We go straight downstairs to his room.

I lie on his bed and watch him
undress. His orange baseball jacket,
all the way from Ontario,
drops to the þoor - THE RAMS, in felt,

arched across the hunky back.
He unzips his calf-length
Star-walkers, his damp black Levi's,
and adjusts his loaded modelling-pouch:

he stands before me in his socks -
as white as bridesmaids,
little daisies, driven snow.
John Wayne watches from the wall

beside a shelf-ful of pistols.
Well, he says, d'you like it?
All I can think of is Granny,
how she used to shake her head,

when I stood by her bed on Sundays,
so proud in my soap-smelling
special frock, and say Ah,
Bless your little cotton socks!

To view poems from each of these books, click on the cover