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

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Mary MacRae

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Translation

Balanced between her fingers, the watery world
of a blue spun-glass paperweight reflects
a bulging window, clouds, a scrap of sky.

Her past is stacked on the sill, the family filed
in black and white; she must re-invent them.
Too many voices. Doesn’t feel herself.

Imagines swimming in those weighted waters:
bubbles rise, float up to the attics,
her hard white bed, to burst at night in dreams.


*********


Light freefalls to where she’s painting her skin;
she holds her gaze as if her eyelids were pinned
facing the sun. Needs protective clothing.

Paint is toxic; on the studio floor
discarded latex gloves like dead skin hands
have made a jug of flowers bloom on canvas

while on either side, life-sized, her two sons loom,
damp from the brush. Considers jug, mirror,
canvas, mirror, jug - the room breathes roses -

conjures in colour, then, as if sprung from a box,
appears, head first, herself, wordlessly.

 

Page(s) 9-10

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