Maura Dooley

Vertaling


I struggle to balance your words on a silver tray.
They tinkle. I fear for a smash and splinters.

Shuffling along trying to match the spring in your step
all the time looking up, keeping my head in the air,

I have filled each one with a drop of something.
A pinch more? Does the flavour seem right?

The scent? Mixing them to a different shade
none is quite as you would have made them.

Shyly, I raise my tray to you. An offering on tin,
buckling a little beneath the weight.


*


UnEnglished


On the desk a bible in Welsh is open at the Psalms
and like the woman who arrived with a pheasant
and sat to pluck it on the summer lawn – the feathers
taken by the wind to the four corners of the earth
as the naked bird stiffened on the grass –
so I knock at the door of this language, its double dds
and double lls, its simmering beauty, and hear how
to baste and roast it to plump goodness,
the house herby and steamy with new flavours,
sharing the succulent dish with any who would try.


*


Her Wish for Big Windows


is a denial of swaddling, coddling winter warmth
of hearth and home and the drawing of curtains 
in small pretty rooms with their interesting beams
 
she wants an expanse of rippling glass to show up
cobwebs, bleed the carpet, stripe and strip the spines of books,
hers is the need for a spill, swash, swill of light
 
never mind the long shady season that is to come,
the shortness of days that no clock can turn back,
each casement, every sash will open wide in that house
the brilliant air will bathe and soothe her smiling, waiting face.


*


Gaudy Welsh


When you see it, you know the truth of it,
it is the everyday cast as our tomorrows,
as if the sturdy sweetness of a jug of cream
had burst into song,
rose of the dawn sky, blue of the starless,
                               cloud and diamond,
lustre caught in a rim of gold, it is Home
pitched out into the world in its best dress.

It is everyday and it is tomorrow
and when you see it, you know its truth.


*


The Blue Willow and the Indian Tree


It’s all there in the inflorescence,
the ancient tree of life, the lovers
who try to run from family ties,
the fast-flowing water, the bridge.

Our families crossed continents
in tableware, their Delft, their China,
a story, their story a mystery and overhead always
the birds, wheeling, calling, waiting to land.
 

    9     Vertaling
    10     UnEnglished
    11     Her Wish for Big Windows
    12     Gaudy Welsh
    13     The Blue Willow and the Indian Tree
    14     Uncle Tom Writes Home
    16     Fam
    17     Quiver
    18     Abecedarium
    19     ∞
    20     Casey, Cullen & the Eighth
    21     Tending the Border
    22     Restoration
    23     A Ruined Castle in Wales
    24     Some Things Learnt at Lumb Bank
    25     The Rosebud at Jane Austen’s House
    26     At the Minster Gate Bookshop
    27     L’Heure Bleue
    28     Redhead by the Side of the Road
    29     Ghost Writer
    30     At Orchard House
    32     Mayday in Ravenna
    33     Come Fill the Cup
    34     Mythology
    35     Unacknowledged Legislators
    36     Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
    39     A Year in Mr Inoue’s Haiku
    40     Fine Wind, Clear Morning
    41     Song in an Old Tradition
    42     Span
    43     Counting Down
    44     Blink
    45     Hard Shoulder
    46     The Forests of South London
    47     A-Sighing-and-a-Sobbing
    48     Autumn in the Absent Elms
    49     Seasonal
    50     The Unforgotten
    51     By Way of Kensal Green
    52     In the Blue Vase
    53     Did You Know Ann Atkinson?
    54     A Haunted House
    55     I’ve Been Thinking a Lot About Heaven
    56     Five Fifty-Five
    57     A Bunch of Consolation

    61     Notes
    63     Acknowledgements