Angela Kirby
Black ice
Frost has caught the wax hips on the rose.
Beyond the glaucous ranks of cabbages
leaves flare and flicker on the cherry tree.
I loved this garden ... she says it quietly
and the past tense throws me. New images
obliterate the old, her painting glows
red, blue and gold, such bold colours
for this last of her interior landscapes,
but now she dreams of crows, of foetuses
and snakes. Beside her bed my autumn crocuses
droop on their etiolated stems, fat grapes
reproach and Our Lady of the Seven Dolours
smiles down on us, last relic of lost faith
when we both delighted in the rarer Virgins.
Look at any hair, it’s starting to fall out,
she says. I hold her tight and blindly tout
faith-healing, nature-cures, the light begins
to go, we talk of everything but death.
Page(s) 22-23
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