Moya Pacey: Two Poems

Does the nun know?

(Convents supplemented their incomes by lace making, such as the Poor Clares in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, Ireland)

Does the nun know as she twists

Bleached cotton to and fro

Sturdy fingers moving bobbins

With such steady precision,

Pinning her lace fast

To a small pillow placed

Soft upon her flattened knees.

Is there a glimmer of understanding

How her lace scallops delicate

As a sea creature’s empty shell

Stranded on a frothy tide,

Will be sewn around the silken edge

Of another woman’s bed-pillow

To spread her hair just so?

How that other woman’s body

Lifts and falls to show,

Oh, with such coquettish grace.

“Slow, slow,” that other woman says.

No, wait.

Does the nun know

Where her lace will go?

My whole family sits on top of the sideboard

 (Summer holiday, Hornsea, UK, 1961)

We don’t look comfortable perched

as if we all want to be somewhere else.

My brother’s sitting side on, giving us

the benefit of his wannabe rock star pose

planning a future far away from the sideboard.

I sit next to him my face square on to the camera

wearing a tiny frown between my brows

worrying and crossing my fingers and trying

to remember the name of the saint I need

to pray to for a Happy Family.

My sister’s body twists and her green

eyes search for another family she’d rather

sit with. The baby is a baby and believes

Dad when he says how lucky we are to be

sitting on top of the sideboard this summer

holiday in Hornsea in Nineteen Sixty-One.

Dad’s got it wrong. You can see it on Mam’s face.

She’s not smiling and she’s wearing a jumper

and a mac instead of a frock and silk stockings,

and she wants to get off the sideboard.

                               Moya Pacey