three poems | journal

For the past year and a bit, I've kept an art journal, which is exactly what it sounds like: a diary, but with collages, pictures and so forth alongside the writing. For me, it's much preferable to keeping an ordinary diary, because I put so much effort into making each page beautiful that I don't then write tripe to accompany it.

The first two poems came from my trip to Moscow in April 2007: one inspired by a busker I passed on the bus on the way out of Cambridge, and the second by a Statue of a Porter, surrounded by faceless nudes, in Park Izkusstvo. The first line of the third poem, which dates from September 2007, was just a casual remark I overheard, and the poem grew from that.

----

1. Busker

Even the leaves were edged with gold -
The busker prostrated himself
(a sidewalk worshiper of the golden goddess)
in front of his violin case
Sweeping up the silver river that
spills into the crazy paving.

Even his hair was tinged with gold -
And he sold his talent for a song
(the song was a dream of children, four walls and a roof)
to deafened pairs of passing ears.
Five-penny raindrops fall onto the
tattered velvet of his violin case.

Even the sky was tinged with gold.
The busker shivered in the evening mists
(a golden goddess sold him her spirits for a song)
and curled in tattered cardboard walls.
His silver river poured into his cup,
he dreams of children, four walls and a roof.

----

2. My Husband

Towards the end of our days
You told me - I have seen enough
Now I must close the blinds.
And as you spoke your sparkling eyes
Fell dull.

Each morning as you left for work
My old and cracking fingers smoothed
The wrinkles in your coat
As creased and wrinkled in those days
As your face.

And with mechanical tread
And eyes politely averted from metro belles
You gravely took your post -
I waited in the steam of soup and cooking meat
For you.

Now with leaden tread, and eyes
As dull as blinds, you stand, with wrinkles in your coat
As creased and cracking as my face.
Eyes politely averted from naked stone beauties
And me:

In my soup-stained overcoat
I know,
statues can't come home.

----

3. Love

You could join the dots on that face,
Her mum would laugh (not cruel but thoughtless).
She pouted, like she practised, over buck-teeth breaking free of braces
And pulled her fringe across her eyes.

On a Friday they'd leave school at two
And as their classmates hunced over riddles of figures
He'd join the dots on her face with his tongue
And they'd find out what one + one means.

They took the number twelve up to the park,
His hands traced the shapes on her face
Until a finger slipped and new pictures formed-
A traintrack rolling over far away hills.

The traintrack he found in the lines of her body
Would take them away. She smiled in the mirror.
She scrubbed her face gently, just leaving a patch
Where they'd sealed their promises with a kiss.


[Arctic Nettles (c) 2008]