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Chrissie Gittins

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Santa Teresa's Hand

Knuckles stiff for centuries,
palm wrinkled like the skin of a dry lemon.
I lie on his bedside table crowded by
bottles of pills and wilting bougainvillaea
creeping from the window.

Morning and night my crystal box is brushed
by drapes of tassel and brocade.
He wakes and prays,
places his hand over mine,
prays for a state of grace.

This man. Generalissimo. He thought to lift
unlike minds from his country
like so many swedes from a field.
In the name of God he ripped the hands
from children.
He wags a scythe at his people,
holds their fealty by a thumbtack.

I long for the apricot walls of Avila,
to trace the late shadows as they fall on the Sierra,
touch wet orange blossom by the fountain,
drizzle my fingers with hot candle wax.

I would stroke the necks of windows
at the back of the gilded shrines,
smooth back the folds from their knife thin shawls.

 

Franco kept one of Santa Teresa’s mummified hands by his bedside.

Chrissie Gittins’ poems have been widely published and broadcast. A selection will be published in New British Poetry (Plantagenet Press, hbk) in October 2001. Recent awards include a Hawthornden International Fellowship for 2001.

Page(s) 9

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