Russell Erwin: Two Poems

Midwinter Birthday

 

From where we stand those Hokusai claws

assault the headlands. Each time in the collapse

there is mess—the smashed white,

the shattering of glass. Spray, spume, foam.

A pause, and then again. And this, inexhaustible.

 

As too, here, just beyond our feet, sidling

as if coming to be fed, wine-clear, this water,

ripples in its lithe, almost reptilian skin, and fattening,

gathers depth before breaking, a slow-falling

over in sods, folding smooth-faced, as by a plough—

 

and slides back into itself beneath

a night-sky brilliance of sequin-glitter.

Caul-laced and delicate, laundry-clean,

with little rucks like seersucker cloth

it lazes.

 

In this little bay, this morning, the lift,

then settling, the sure heaving of a flank,

it forages into rocks it has honeycombed,

which are stained, dark as weathered headstones.

 

We knew this before we came but still,

all this, here, before us as we stand.

We cannot comprehend what is. We stand,

looking to where the horizon blurs.

 

A figure in a black wet suit and spear breaches,

clumsy, emerging from where we’d seen him circling,

in the slow way of a predator. Regaining land

he hardens into a man, the shambliness of one,

crippling over rocks, becomes believable.

 

Two fishermen pass, heading to where others

have lines strung; each with a forefinger

feeling for that moment when the water changes

into shining silver. A day not wasted.

 

We share with them the generosity of light,

the fill of ozone, the fact of this day,

and like them, look out.

 

                                       But we have come here

to tear white roses into petals,

to release them. Why?

For you, who had no name,

would have been born today.

 

We are wordless.

In the quiet hive and knot of each other

we hug a common poverty.

 

We turn away,

to the substance of houses, this suburb,

our days, with those words we can speak.

 

Behind in the slap and tug

of the wash, petals drift

on a transparently clear water,

white as skin.

Now irretrievable. Now claimed.

Russell Erwin

 

 

Two Deaths at the Abbey

(for Kathleen Hughes)

 

While I sleep she is dying.                                                

She will not receive any visitors.

As she has always done

this she is doing alone.

By coincidence in the same place

as had my father.

 

I remember the long watch of the night

—that somewhere, that moment.

His: 4.17 a.m. I remember the numbers

of the clock face, black standing

out from the white. And it was finished.

 

I remember silence, complete as an ocean,

a shifting of bodies in other rooms,

murmurs, mutterings, cries cut off,

so that outside there was the stillness

of the frost and the first stirrings of a bird

announcing its survival,

 

while we watched his slow, unyielding labour.

And only we there, to sense a weakening of the dark,

grey sifting behind the blinds. It was finished.

And it was if we were returning

back out from a mine. 

 

She too is elsewhere: morphine for release

from pain’s malice feeds measured peace. 

There is no other world now than this:

the body stripped of anything that it was,

jettisoned: each moment now

distils all that has gone before.

 

There is no other than this:

she and her God, twinned like dancers,

whose name she held as close as the breath

even when pain could not be understood.

So tonight I pray that she …

No … that you, Kathleen,

you who wished to spare us,

will be held, within the fold of wings,

cancer’s torment beyond reach

 

as you slip alone, there in that place

where other lives, each in a failing body,

wait out the night; while we,

who do not keep watch,

turn and ignorantly sleep.            

Russell Erwin