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Vicki Feaver

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The camelia house

What passed there, in air
trapped under the domes
of glass, always damper
and warmer than air outside,
was repeated every dry day:

the wiping down of a bench,
the unwrapping of gingerbread,
the unstoppering of the thermos,
the puffing out of Grandma's lips
to rouse a wild sea in her cup.

She'd read aloud from the Deaths
in the Evening Post, relishing
details of how people died
and the amazing sums they'd left,
then doze with a page of the paper

shading her head, while I peered
into the dark spaces under the iron
lacework of gratings, or played a game
with myself on the paving paths,
jumping as far as I could

without landing on a crack.
I was allowed to collect flowers
that had fallen onto the soil.
But they were brown at the edges,
or nibbled by beetles and slugs.

So, once, I picked a flower
from a bush - crimson petals
so intricately folded
it was like a flower made of paper
dipped in glistening wax.

When I found it later, wrapped
in a handkerchief, squashed
in a pocket of my shorts,
I held it to my mouth, pretending
I'd coughed up a clot of blood.



Untitled illustration


Vicki Feaver has recently moved from West Sussex to South Lanarkshire;  from a house with bats to a garden with buzzards. She was previously Professor of Poetry at University College, Chichester.  She has published two collections of poetry, Close Relatives (1981) and The Handless Maiden (1994) which was awarded a Heineman Prize and shortlisted for the Forward Prize.  A selection of her work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 2.  Magma 13, Winter 1998, includes a full interview with her by Vicci Bentley

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