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James Sutherland-Smith

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Mauve Irises

Crumbling the mortar of the culvert’s flagstones
One hundred dark mauve irises grew,
A corps de ballet curved over by recent rain
Not music, as below the spring flood jabbered through.
Above them were white lilacs and a late magnolia,
Each petal succulent to touch, also white
Though tinted where they joined their stem with a colour
Like tenderness, like a fingernail’s pink quick.
I wished the doctor’s daughter to gather
Mauve irises, lilac and magnolia,
But she merely lifted a languid arm to wave:
Off, no doubt, to somewhere beyond a path trodden
Beside rushing waters; dark-haired, dark-eyed, white-skinned,
Majestic, half-Bulgarian and seventeen.
She moved so slowly as though the life before her
Might be a burden. I thought how weightless
We can become with age and raised a hollow hand
To wave back noticing how mottled my skin was
Like the stalks of hemlock I stood behind.

 

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