Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Mary MacRae

print this page

Beyond

Waking, I remember how you
cleared the ground when you came home
from war, a stranger who broke open
chalky flints with blows from a hatchet,
put each pat in its place in a wall –
you knew what was what in the garden

so you toiled over your stones, a jigsaw
of weird shapes like the backbones of animals
whose names I didn’t know, locked
together ball and socket fashion,
the white side warm to the touch, the split
face cool, grained and watermarked.

Only a low wall, dividing fruit
from flowers – you planted alyssum
along the top, with its eggy smell,
and I sat there on the soft white globes,
dreaming, while you gardened. I loved
that wall and thought you did as well,

pictured root-webs creeping through
its dry spaces, feeding on earth crumbs
in a hot tangle, felt myself small
as the ant in its polished cave while the stand
of golden rod swayed overhead.
‘Fetch me the string, it’s beyond the wall,’

your voice breaks in. ‘Look sharp, now!’
Can’t see it – on the wall, under it,
near it – wherever I look, nothing.
‘Don’t know beyond,’ I blurt. You laugh.
‘Six years old and don’t know that!’
Everything goes cold and my eyes sting.

 

Page(s) 38

Back to top