COPYRIGHT NOTICE
All the poetry on this page is COPYRIGHT 2002 by Hayes Walker
(Contact: hwalker@poetrycritic.com)
For Pat, always
Long After
Lorre
The Skeleton That Died For Arran at Nineteen Months
The Old Brood Mare in Stable Three Vasectomy
Mom Goes to Church Haiku
Cool Cats Jarring Situation
Lucky Spin Brother Guinn's Trophy
A Prodigal Missed at Work
The Captain Hadn't Loved in a Year A Poem for Pat
First Noon Seeing Through Glass
Snacks Rimelcca's Words
None speak of it--few have minds to remember--
yet in the minds of higher survivors
memories make unwarranted shadows.
Blue are the round lakes that dot all our meadows;
only life's wars are lived in our rivers
(men counted three and killed all their number);
the sun makes day;; the indifferent watchfires
sit out blind tricks in the black pool of nighttime;
but we who remember are nodders tearful.
Deer among ruins are steppers careful,
horses take flight at mushrooming sunflame,
and often the swans see whales in their nightmares.
The little skeleton died last night. Regret,
like a mild headache, will respond to sleep
or coffee. It's not hard to get over it,
in spite of what you've heard, because of what
we are--life-worshipers--and what death is.
Child--dead of war, of hate, of malnutrition,
victim of Vietnam, Biafra, Harlem,
parental anger in landscaped L.A. suburbs,
of shanty-dwelling loafers who buy fine cars
with welfare checks and feed their children junk
from surplus doles: lard, cornstarch, beans--
what can we tell you that will say it true,
will "tell it like it is?" Dead child--our loss--
although you die by millions, you will be
no loss to many minds for very long.
The world won't miss you, and you won't miss the world.
The Old Brood Mare in Stable Three
The Stablemaster said, "It's time I got
out of this business. They're a sorry lot,
those stock of mine. You know I've tried and tried,
but only one or two are broke to ride.
So get yourselves down there," he told us then,
"and make that old corral a slaughter-pen."
Gabe said, "Pardon me, Sir; I know that eight
are worthless nags, and I don't mean to prate
'bout them; but, Sir, you can't make me agree
'bout that old brood mare down in Stable Three.
She might seem feeble, but she's not so sick
that one more service couldn't do the trick."
"She's heavy now," He sighed, "but so infirm
I doubt that she can carry the babe full term.
You're right, though; slaughter's not the proper course.
She ought to die by Nature, not by force.
Don't take her to greener pasture. Withhold the oats.
She'll glut on the rich green cane that aborts her colts."
Mom goes to church and
takes the most money and
plunks it down hardest and
compliments the preacher and
goes to the revivals and
also attends the Music and
Poetry Club festivals and
leaves me home writing and
revising my poems, and
when she comes home and
plunks down her Bible and
goes to the garden and
munches an apple and
naps, I take them and
put them with the Old and
the True great stories and
she never reads them.
The Mother
Pussy Belle was fifteen feet
away, but I could hear
her purring. Hours earlier,
she'd had the nerve to bear
half a dozen kittens to
our generous welfare.
How happy are the ignorant
who think they've done their share.
The Father
Papa Boots was purring, too,
plotting, perhaps, new evils.
He hadn't caught a mouse in months--
("Such filthy little devils!
I must preserve my dignity
and not sink to such levels.")
With such cool pride he seems to live,
but notice how he grovels
to share the mother's food (increased
after the new arrivals).
This fairway, on the left beyond the swamp,
slopes downward toward the fence. On some tee shots
that start out well but hook formidably
and land where the slope would logically spell doom,
the ball will take a sharp hop to the right,
toward the green. I guess a crazy spin
gets to the ball from some quirk in the swing,
wronging the flight but half-apologizing
on landing, like a rudeness turned to jest
by twist of word or expression. At such times
you feel relief that makes the error seem
no threat to future play. The trouble is,
you just can't always count on a lucky spin.
You might hit the swamp, where no spin changes things.
You'd better give some thought to curing that hook.
My son's engaged to a foreign lass--
from the other end of the street!
He says it was a miracle
that they should ever meet.
I cautioned him against this step.
I said, "When the girl next door
can't please you, you're too picky and
should be a bachelor."
He said, "Perhaps you're right; traditions
oftentimes are wise.
But when I touch her foreign hand
and gaze at her foreign eyes,
adore her foreign eyebrows and
admire her foreign nose,
and marvel at the foreign way
she wears her foreign clothes,
it's then that I wax drastic.
So, although I know you're loath
to be iconoclastic,
I beg: approve this troth."
I gave the pair my blessing
(the girl is good and meek),
and I still call the boy my son
in spite of his wayward streak.
The Captain Hadn't Loved in a Year
The Captain hadn't loved in a year--not since
the last time we were in this dying port.
We watched now, as his eye was being caught
by the hungering waist and stained lips of a once-
priceless beauty.
He pocketed his hands;
one of them seemed to test a coin for weight.
We tethered the barge. The Captain walked on the pier
on river-legs. The girl strolled her best way
and primped her smile; breathed deep, but still looked thin.
The Captain hadn't loved in a year--not since
fresh lips and supple wealth were his to hurt
or gladden by the turning of his thought
toward or away.
We watched him, between shunts
of cargo; saw him rub his stubbly chin
with a rough thumb, and shape his mouth to say
something; but if he said it, we didn't hear.
Before he turned to help us with the freight,
he tossed her the coin, which fell where all love ends.
The dew has left the grass as quality
leaves early poems. We know better now
how to dismiss our dreams, how to give up
trying to impress with morning faces.
You, my bright inspiration (all shadows point
away from you--or am I yet deceived?):
the dew has left your eyes. You look at me
as if you cannot bear to look at me
but cannot look away. Well, so am I.
Don't worry! Mornings repeat themselves, with dew
and everything. We will know better then:
to not dismiss those dreams, to not give up,
to be more realistic, more romantic.
Experience can improve experience.
Come to me. Come. Listen. We are too small
to matter to the landscape or the sun
or history. We matter to each other
or else to none on earth. I love you. I love you.
Kristen sat in the kitchenette
beside my room of dream.
She contemplated cantaloupe.
She sipped prophetic cream.
Mulling upon her appetite,
she raised to her parted lips
a sugar-powdered circle cake
with a tryst-place for fingertips.
She craved a pastry filled with fruit--
flaky, and sprinkled with nuts galore.
She glanced at the big-screen TV set
and thought of a show on Channel Four.
But suddenly she tired of sweets
and grasped the neat-laid tablecloth
and slowly tugged until dishes and eats,
the cup, and the cream's decrepit froth
lay fit for the pusses that prowl the floor.
I lay like ham between the bread-white sheets.
The Danish darling stood, delicious, at the door.
Lorre rhymes with story and glory--
a glory-story is she.
Last year there were only two of us;
this year there are clearly three,
for Lorre's a separate person
with feelings and thoughts of her own.
For four months now her bright little mind
has grown as her body has grown.
Pat and I can already tell
how fine her progress will be:
She'll be walking at one, talking by two,
and learning to read when she's three.
We'll give her a good education
in spite of the public schools,
and in spite of prevailing customs,
we'll teach her some moral rules.
Into a world of too many
we have brought one more to share
all our diminished resources,
fuel, food, water and air.
She will be one of two children,
or maybe our only one.
The important thing is, we'll make her aware
of all that needs to be done
to help the earth go on living.
And we will make sure she's aware
of values worth having and giving.
We'll teach her to love and to care.
Of course we wish happiness for her,
but purpose in life is worth more.
The happiness comes from the purpose--
a fact many people ignore.
And she'll make her own contribution,
whether it be great or small,
and join her parents in trying to build
a good world--for Lorre, and all.
Arran, my sunrise daughter, I remember
watching you wriggle from one home to another:
out of the sea you'll learn to call your mother,
into our air, that morning of December.
The sleepy doctor yawned, "Ah… a boy-child!"
(and asked next morning, "Did we circumcise?")
We named you, saw you weighed, and heard your cries
(if such a word describes a sound so mild).
Now you are walking, saying forty words,
conducting to the stereo, and "dancing."
Your life-skills and awareness are advancing.
You pet Dog gently, laugh at squirrels and birds.
What blessings can we wish you? Which will you take?
Books, music, art; good humor and good will;
a critic's insight, a performer's skill,
whether you write, sing, dance, paint, sew, or bake.
A mutual blessing is the time we share
with music on this hot late afternoon.
You've played all day, and you'll be napping soon.
Come, let me hold you in the rocking chair.
Rest in the lumpy cradle of Daddy's arm,
Mahler's Sixth Symphony your lullaby.
A pink fist taps the grim march on your thigh
as if the tune were Old MacDonald's Farm.
Such innocence becomes you now; but, daughter,
a world of grim truth lies beyond our yard:
Its fists are rough, its boots are thick and hard,
its marches lead the sweetest lambs to slaughter.
As Dr. Howell tugged at my left vas,
I most desired a son. The anesthetic
took better hold, and as he snipped my right,
I thought of all the money I would save--
at fifteen hundred dollars now per birth
and thirty thousand more to raise each kid--
by putting Father Vanity away.
Back home, in bed, with ice bag on my scars,
with Lorre scolding, "Get up! You're not sick!"
and thirteen-day-old Arran snoozing near,
I thought of Eddie Cantor and Pat Boone
and other guys with households full of daughters.
Some men, they say, can only father girls,
a fate that still breeds jokes, kills dreams, brings anguish.
Cantor and Boone adjusted well, it seems.
I never felt a need to have a son,
and I had feared the prospect of more daughters.
Envisioning all those tutus, braces, proms,
sororities, and weddings, I had wondered
if I were a chronic daughter-fatherer.
"Not any more," I said aloud… and rested.
Here, folks, is the only good haiku I've ever written. It's also the only haiku I've ever
spent more than about ten seconds trying to write. The world needs more haiku like it
needs more ants.
in the microwave
the souP goes PoP, PoP, PoP, PoP!
the Peas exPloding
The subsidy publisher said my verse
"deserves to be preserved."
Like peaches, perhaps, or apples or pears?
He really has some nerve!
Ah, but he touched my vanity,
so, though the lines be runny
and oversweet (gone to sugar, I see),
the publisher got my money,
and I have books filling five shelves wide,
with sales in the nether reaches.
I think I'll put my verse aside
and put up pears or peaches.
Like a statue in the wood
stood the elk, less morally good
than he should have been, stripping dozens
of trees and munching his grassy cousins.
Brother Guinn, on the other hand,
who shot the elk, is a Christian and
loves his enemies--which proves, you see,
the elk was not his enemy.
You didn't show up this morning,
though you said you wanted to work.
Has your confided fear come true?
Has your husband beaten you up?
I'm sure you must be crying;
perhaps you're bruised and bleeding.
Girl, you should be here smiling
and typing my bills of lading.
How can I pack another box
or stencil another order
until I see you safe again
slugging the old typewriter?
(For D.S. on a Saturday in August 1978)
My wife Pat worked as a "Y2K tester" on a contract basis in late 1998 and most of 1999.
This is for her.
A Poem For Pat
(For Valentine's Day, 1999)
I've known you less than twenty-nine years,
so it's too soon to tell
just what it is about you, dear,
that pleases me so well.
We haven't made love ten thousand times,
but it's quality that counts.
So even if it's just nine thousand or so,
your love I will not renounce.
We've only listened to Yanni once--
and that was enough for me--
but we made love then, 'cause I wanted to hear
some beautiful sounds, you see.
We only have two kids, but those
appear to be two good ones.
That's better than having four or five
deprived, misunderstood ones.
(Lorre studied in London and such,
so she wouldn't feel like a bumpkin.
And orange-clad Arran hobnobs with artistes;
Philip Glass called her a pumpkin!)
And after I had the vasectomy--
a choice needing no revisions!--
you coined this phrase in ecstasy:
"Thank God for small incisions!"
Well, thank God for you, my wife, my friend--
or as you like to say, "Thank Goddess."
And I'm prepared to worship her, too,
as I undo your bodice.
Your love is like the pies you make:
though piece after piece I've tried,
it's different every time we "bake."
Which was best I could never decide.
But this I can tell you anyway,
as I lie beside you resting:
For years and years after Y2K,
we'll need to go on testing.
But let not this poem's last lines be spent
in a witty but shallow way.
So with wild, impassioned sentiment,
here's what I want to say:
Pat, I love you. My darling, I love you.
Oh, Pat dear, I love you true.
Pat, I adore you. I cherish your love.
Oh, yes Pat, oh yes I do!
I had been reading my program dutifully--
less impressed than amazed by the body of work
this man has produced, awards and praise he has garnered--
and hoping the holders of the tickets to
the seats in front of me had wisely decided
to stay at home and keep each other warm
rather than brave cold drizzle to come down here
and spoil my view. What's entertaining about
the Philip Glass Ensemble, for me anyway,
is watching them. The music--the sound--will reach
into my ears, brain, mind, relentlessly
until I briefly wonder why I let
it in. But now I know, and later I'll know.
Responsible people subject themselves to art
and feel they've received a blessing. Some people steam
themselves in a sauna, then roll in a snowbank naked.
Some do both, I suppose. Each act requires
an effort, a commitment to action. My wish
that night for those ticketholders was that they
would seek a blessing from each other's art.
But, no such luck. With the certainty of pledge drives,
they arrived: she of big hair and Neiman-Marcus
fashion, he the sort of fellow who makes
a suit look rumpled by inhabiting it.
With high-heeled self-assurance she excused
herself past twenty knees without touching one.
Seedily professorial, bearded, dithering,
he stood in the aisle fumbling with ticket stubs
and questioned the numbers of the row and the seat
until she confirmed them both from memory.
Halfway to his seat, amid apologies
for injuries inflicted, he dropped his program
and muttered "What the hell!" Taking his seat,
he said, "I wouldn't read it anyway.
I know all about him. And I'm bored already."
I sensed a discussion brewing and recalled
my miniature recorder still in my coat
pocket from the meeting this afternoon.
(I swear I had no intention of bringing it
to the concert hall for secretive recording.
If I want to hear something again, I'll buy a tape.
I buy few tapes.) Nothing significant
was said in that meeting, so I pressed record.
I could not see the faces of the people
seated beside this pair or in front of them;
I can only imagine the raised eyebrows, the dropped
jaws, and the grimaces to which they yielded
unless, through practiced objectivity,
they held their features still but absorptive, as
did I. What follows is all the tape could capture,
augmented often by my ear for whispers.
You'll know the phrases for which I had to strain.
"Whether you like it or not, Dear, he is the
pre-eminent composer of our time!"
"Just as Raff was in his time--a bright flash
whose reputation is a cinder now."
"Is that Raff's fault, or posterity's ignorance?"
"Wise changes in critical taste, I'd have to say."
"You'd have to guess they were wise. I like to recall
what Frost wrote about change--it's 'due to truth
being in and out of favor.' "
"If Glass is truth,
then it's quite fragile. It will soon be shattered
by the next slick composer with what passes
for sex appeal in music nowadays."
"Corigliano?"
"He's too good. So's Rouse.
Neither is slick. You're just insensitive."
"So what IS slick?"
"You're about to hear what's slick.
You've heard it fifty times--four times in concert."
"It isn't slick. Your attention just slides off it."
"My attention doesn't slide off unslick music!
It bonds to music that deserves to hold it."
"So who will bump off Glass and shatter him,
but not get shattered in the process, then reign for decades
as the world's most honored composer whom you don't like?"
"Good question. I'd bet on Tavener if he
were not so 'veiled' in religiosity.
That turns most people off. It turns me off."
"So you assume it turns most people off."
"It does. You know it does. It turns you off.
It isn't a question of someone shattering Glass--
though I admit I brought that image into
the conversation. Glass will subside on his own
by aging or dying, but the fad of his music will
decline through overexposure. People will tire
of it. Some slick young fellow who even now
is learning by Glass's example how to put
slick music over to a gullible public…"
"That's
enough! If you won't define slick, I forbid you to
say it again. Regarding your safe prediction
of Glass's physical decline and death,
forgive me if I see a parallel
to Mozart. He died, his music was neglected
for decades. Even before he died, there were
years when he and his music were out of favor.
Don't tell me it was because his music was slick,
that his audience had been gullible, then wised up!
Every composer ages and dies; his works
get good or bad reviews, succeed or fail
in varying degrees. Few have succeeded
as well or more consistently than Glass.
It seems to me he is your 'heart's abhorrence,'
as Browning put it. I see no logic to it.
As for your statement that Glass's popularity
will decline through overexposure, don't you wish
that could be the fate of your poetry? What if
millions of people could read and love your poems,
and pay you to read them aloud, for an entire
generation. Would you not be willing to have
your fad decline through overexposure? Who
reads your poems now but me and editors
whose most auspicious comment is, 'I wish
we weren't so overstocked, we might take this'?"
"You're comparing apples and persimmons. The world
embraces music and shuns poetry--
I'm speaking in general terms, you understand--
yet it produces, from the compositional standpoint,
far less music than poetry: one good song
for every thousand readable poems, one
piano concerto per thousand tons of chapbooks
crammed with free verse and hauled to bookstores on
consignment before being hauled home to a shelf
in the garage. And all of that because
of a failure to understand that in our culture
music tends to be public, while poetry
tends to be private as a diary
or a prayer: an end in itself, its own reward.
Few poets hold themselves to professional standards,
but most crave publication and think they deserve it.
An artist doesn't blow his nose and frame
the tissue, but many poets express themselves
in ways that private, which they want made public.
They cannot see the embarrassment they are
to the art they claim to love but cannot honor.
They cannot see the futility of putting
their ragged verses and anti-verses into
the vanity volumes sold by scamming scum
who praise and print for profit, or amateur
poetry magazines read only by
contributors who get a copy as payment.
They are so self-deceived. They think they are
creating literature!"
"As Frost would tell us,
'Weep for what little things could make them glad.' "
"He was speaking of children's playthings. He wouldn't say
that about vanity publishing, I feel sure."
"I can think of one good thing to say about
subsidy publishing. It's the last bastion of
free speech and the right to publish. It's there for those
who want it or feel they need it."
"So are cocaine
and cigarettes."
"Don't tell me that shelling out
fifty dollars to have a poem printed,
or two or three K for a couple of hundred books,
has ever ruined lives like drugs and smoking.
I'm sure it has blessed some people, given them pride
in their achievements, minor though they be.
And here and there it might have saved a life
from suicide. You can't put everyone
in your box, Dear, and make them live your way.
For many, it would not be an improvement,
however earnestly you think it might.
Gosh, isn't it wonderful how Glass's music
can get us talking about all sorts of things
and help us straighten out your misconceived
notions? You know, it has occurred to me
that most of your well-meant utopian schemes
for social improvement are undemocratic. They
could never get through Congress. Like your idea
for kindergarten testing to diagnose
potential killers and send them to Juilliard."
"Not directly! But put them on that track,
put a keyboard under their hands to pound upon
instead of a younger brother; a baton
to wave and point instead of a Daisy rifle."
"Why music school? Why not a writer's workshop?"
"There's too much writing already! A twelve-year-old
covers half a page of notebook paper with words,
and if his lines are of uneven length
and show no aptitude for linear thought,
reveal no appreciation of the distinction
between the comma and the period,
and display no fondness for reality,
he's hailed as a poet by any teacher who's
studied creative writing, and most have done so."
"I suppose I would be impertinent to point
out that I've never heard of such a case,
a seventh-grader hailed as a lyric genius.
You say it happens often? Well, go on, Dear…"
"Composing, though, is a sterner discipline.
You either learn it well or you just don't do it
at all. No teacher swoons over melodies
that start off aimlessly, then lose their way.
There are no little magazines for tenth-
rate symphonies, no amateur sonata slams,
no grannies and aunts to read a string quartet
and smile, 'Isn't it sweet what Billy wrote?'
Serious music isn't cute to grannies.
It doesn't attract the frivolous amateur
as poetry does. A composer meets high standards
or his works do not get published or performed."
"So you are saying, if I'm hearing you right,
that you would have been even less successful as
a composer than you are as a poet. Or
perhaps you had a greater aptitude
for music, but you chose the wrong career…
…Such silence! Performing some John Cage, are we, now?"
"In the back of my mind, I have been working on
a definition of slickness, since you inquired.
Slickness is the result of a composer's
intentional and methodical use of weak
melodic and motivic material
in ways that are calculated to attract
and hold the hearer's attention. It's usually done
with lots of repetition and jolting dynamics,
and Glass is a glaring reflector of both techniques."
"I think you've precisely described how Beethoven
used 'da, da, da, DA' in his Fifth Symphony."
"I know Beethoven. Beethoven is a friend of mine.
Philip Glass is no Beethoven."
"Cute, Dear, cute."
"There's also something druglike about his music,
half 'upper' and half 'downer,' as if it's meant
to give you a rush and numb your mind at once.
I haven't tried either drug, but I can imagine
a blend of heroin and valium
might duplicate the effect of--or inspire!--
music like Glass's."
"As opium did inspire
Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique?"
"Touche.
Of course, that was vicarious--from De Quincey.
Is Philip Glass married?"
"Why?"
"I'd like to know.
I always wonder if such a prolific artist
has time for a wife and kids--a normal life.
Without the encumbrance of a family,
a guy would have more time to pursue his art."
"I see a phobia raising its ugly excuse
for a head. I've noticed that fellows such as you,
heterosexual wusses with artistic
yearnings, whose reaches exceed their grasps by miles,
are jealous and resentful of people with
different lifestyles and boundless creative skills.
Are you suggesting he has a trait in common
with Schubert, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Copland,
and others who were…"
"Don't go there. Not here.
There must be more creative types than me
all around us at a concert like this. Let's not
offend anyone we haven't already offended."
"You're so considerate, occasionally.
Don't slouch so. Try to enjoy the music tonight.
You would enjoy it if you'd listen to it
acceptingly, let it stroke the sensual centers
of your brain. Of course, it'll never stroke you as well
as a Thursday evening at Café Med, when the lady
dances her belly dance!"
"Well, she's an example
of a work of art performing a work of art,
all the more lovely because ephemeral,
a 'silken tent moment.' "
"So is Philip Glass
when he's on stage performing! Can't you see
the comparison with your belly dancer? Don't laugh!
Oh! Oh! They're dimming the lights! Let's both hush now.
Oh, there he is! Be good and listen!"
"Grrrrrr!"
NOTE: According to Wikipedia, Philip Glass has been married four times and has been in a relationship
with cellist Wendy Sutter since 2005. He has four children.
I have heard about twenty hours' worth of Glass's music. I have enjoyed most of it, disliked some,
and look forward to hearing all his works that I haven't yet heard. Based on all that I know about
Philip Glass, I like and respect him very much.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s I worked sporadically on a novel concerning historical events in
ninth-century northern Britain. The young woman Rimelcca learns to read and write from her friend
Tregalomoch mac Tolseg, who is studying to become a monk. Using a metrically free style because there
is no one to teach her the intricate bardic forms, she keeps a verse diary throughout her life. I had planned
to write about thirty poems in her persona, each presenting a vignette of her life set against the ongoing
cultural and historical struggle between the Picts and their adversaries, the Scots and the Anglo-Saxons.
Eventually I had to admit to myself that I'm not a novelist, but I'm glad I made the attempt. I'm pleased
with the salvaged fragments: a Prologue in mac Tolseg's words, and these five poems in Rimelcca's words.
February in the year of our Lord 806
These are my words, Rimelcca's words.
My friend Treg, my teacher, will not see them.
He would be surprised, for he calls me a plodding student.
I do not say back to him all that he speaks me to learn,
for he might say that I do not need to be taught any more.
Nor do I let him know how good a teacher he is,
for he might decide to teach a brighter, prettier girl, like Alpia,
and I fear that she would become the teacher and Treg the student.
It galls me to think of the terrible lessons she would give him.
Much better that I should do it, yet he is proof against me.
I think I understand Treg, but I am not always sure.
He wants no wife, fearing that he will repeat in her his mother,
a slave between husband and children, beaten and beating.
He fears that in himself he will repeat his father,
shamed as a heartless warrior, a hunter too easily wearied,
slosh-drunk with the water-of-life the Scots trade us for silver.
Better to be tonsured, respected, and plow the field of the Abbey.
I love my friend Treg. He must not see these words.
I am glad he is no warrior, sword-bearing, grinning against fear.
He will not leave as my father left, brave, never to return,
but he will leave in his own way, if I fail to have my way.
Dear Christ, I love my friend, my teacher, Treg mac Tolseg.
Show him that he need not forsake righteousness by accepting me.
Should I carelessly hide these words for him to find?
In the year of our Lord 806, the month before barley-ripening
The girls in my village, the young women, seem to have grown in number
as they have grown in size, and some in girth with child.
At weaving, at baking, at work in the barley field,
they are all that I see, the sad-eyed women trudging and sighing,
quickening to alertness only to call me lazy,
to tell me I must learn to be more like them.
I am becoming more like them, but I cannot be glad of it.
Their frowns of sorrow and worry are as weights upon my face,
and their tears are beginning to glimmer in my eyes.
Their mothers age and die, and the daughters take their places.
My mother is forty and ill, and wants rest, and looks at the ground,
and says I must marry above me, and weeps for my father.
The young men, the boys my age and older, have left the village
as good teeth loosen and fall from soft gums that cannot hold them.
They marched away shouting of the glories of battle, victory, gold bowls, silver chains.
They will gather the Northumbrians into valleys of slaughter, they say,
as the seafolk catch fish in their nets, and as the hero-king Brude mac Bile
lured Ecgfrith's multitudes to their deserved deaths at Lin Garan.
But Canaul mac Tadg is not Brude mac Bile,
and Northumbria has more iron swords than golden bowls.
The women know that they will harvest the barley.
In the year of our Lord 807, midsummer
I will marry the man astride that black stallion, for he has chosen me
and paid my mother thirty cattle, a bronze bowl, and a silver pin.
I am fourteen and ripe. In two years, or one, I could not so enrich my mother.
He is a large man and fair, my betrothed, with a beard like polished copper.
His slain father was of Dalriada, his mother Budicca is of our valley.
He is made wealthy at twenty by the well-thrown spear of a Briton.
His hall has seven rooms--so my mother joyfully tells me--
with a servant's hut and a stable of horses at a nice distance.
There is a ditch enclosing hall, hut, and stable, and a wall of stones beyond.
In our valley of poor shepherds there is no such fortress.
Ardla mac Fursa is the name of the one who will be my beloved.
Fursa planted him, Budicca bore and named and nurtured him,
teaching him love for her land and folk, so he is sworn to our people,
and he is more Pict than Scot though he wears the skin of his father.
The day of our wedding will be at hand in less than a half-month.
The priest Cluadh will say holy words upon our handclasp
and draw crosses upon the air as if he were Saint Columba reborn.
Then Ardla--my husband Ardla--will bear me away on his stallion
to the door of his thick-beamed hall and order his servants to their wicker hut.
He will lie pale upon me, straw over bronze, on his wool bed.
And I will grow great and greater with sons and with daughters,
Pictish sons and daughters to hold our land against many foes.
True names of my true tongue will they bear, kings' names, and mothers of kings.
Aluta and Molfiata, my daughters--and Uisnebolga and Coelnesa.
Taran and Gilged, my sons--and Drust and Galam and Brude.
The twenty-fourth day of April in the year of our Lord 813
Ardla sleeps deeply beside me, believing his strength is well-spent.
Perhaps he dreams of sons he has almost ceased to hope for.
I pray he will be content to boast of the beauty of his daughters.
I dread a child that would be all his joy and all my care.
His sweat and mine mingle and trickle down the bare slopes of my body,
reminding me of my fear and of what I must do before sleeping.
He does not stir as I rise and gather my cloak about me.
If he wakes, he will surely think, "No harm, she has gone to the privy."
He would be right, but he would not guess all my reasons.
His mind did not hear all that my mind heard when the bishop preached,
"Ask God to care for your needs, but care for them as well as you can."
Ardla was not known to me when the old pagan medicine woman spoke
of the agonies of childbirth and showed us girls a leather water bag
and how to use it, blessing it with the names and spells of the old gods.
How odd that the words of a chaste priest of Christ admonishing his flock
should mingle with those of an old three-husbanded woman
bestowing secrets with sly winks upon burgeoning maidens
to tell me that prayer cleanses where we, for all our trying, cannot.
The sixteenth day of September in the year of our Lord 814
My husband, I have done all that I can for you.
I have gone as far as I could go.
I have married you, I have lain with you.
I have cooked your meals and sewn your trousers and your shirt.
And I have borne you twin daughters, and by God's grace they yet live.
I have seen you leave before, and I have greeted your return.
But this time there is something strange in the wind, and my eyes sting.
For now I have watched you sharpen the edges of your sword,
And I have seen you hug the children and kiss their red eyes.
I have stood numb as you swung upon your back the eweskin bag
with a day's provisions and the trinkets the children made you.
And I have gone with you as far as I could go,
to the pond at the end of our meadow, where the sheep water
and the ducks dive for mussels with their tails straight up in the air,
where I will stand and cry and desire you and cry again
when your sad friends return and tell me of your courage.
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