260 Childhood poems

This is the sound of the bell. It rings, full of brass and the end it brings: once for the children, once for the child who sits alone. His eyes hurt and mild, he waits, holding his things. Time should hold no meaning for him yet. You don’t learn how to play; you forget. But he knows a while well, and longs for the clang of the bell. A bell is a room of nothing. No, a dome with a hidden swing — a will, a sway, a tone, a peal, the beginning of song. The wild crowd nears, passes, laughing. Here is the sound of the bell.

Recess! Oh, Recess! We love you! You rule! You keep us away from the teachers in school. Your swings are refreshing. Your slides are the best. You give us a break from a really hard test. Recess! Oh, Recess! We want you to know, you’re sweeter than syrup, you’re special like snow. You don’t assign homework. You make the day fun. You let us play kickball and run in the sun. Recess! Oh, Recess! You’re first on our list. We’d be in despair if you didn’t exist. We’re happy we have you. You’re awesome and cool. Recess! Oh, Recess! We love you! You rule!

When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow'd back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Anight my shallop, rustling thro' The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove The citron-shadows in the blue: By garden porches on the brim, The costly doors flung open wide, Gold glittering thro' lamplight dim, And broider'd sofas on each side: In sooth it was a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Often, where clear-stemm'd platans guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head down a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The sloping of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms unmown, which crept Adown to where the water slept. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. A motion from the river won Ridged the smooth level, bearing on My shallop thro' the star-strown calm, Until another night in night I enter'd, from the clearer light, Imbower'd vaults of pillar'd palm, Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb Heavenward, were stay'd beneath the dome Of hollow boughs.—A goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Still onward; and the clear canal Is rounded to as clear a lake. From the green rivage many a fall Of diamond rillets musical, Thro' little crystal arches low Down from the central fountain's flow Fall'n silver-chiming, seem'd to shake The sparkling flints beneath the prow. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Above thro' many a bowery turn A walk with vary-colour'd shells Wander'd engrain'd. On either side All round about the fragrant marge From fluted vase, and brazen urn In order, eastern flowers large, Some dropping low their crimson bells Half-closed, and others studded wide With disks and tiars, fed the time With odour in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Far off, and where the lemon-grove In closest coverture upsprung, The living airs of middle night Died round the bulbul as he sung; Not he: but something which possess'd The darkness of the world, delight, Life, anguish, death, immortal love, Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd, Apart from place, withholding time, But flattering the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Black the garden-bowers and grots Slumber'd: the solemn palms were ranged Above, unwoo'd of summer wind: A sudden splendour from behind Flush'd all the leaves with rich gold-green, And, flowing rapidly between Their interspaces, counterchanged The level lake with diamond-plots Of dark and bright. A lovely time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, Distinct with vivid stars inlaid, Grew darker from that under-flame: So, leaping lightly from the boat, With silver anchor left afloat, In marvel whence that glory came Upon me, as in sleep I sank In cool soft turf upon the bank, Entranced with that place and time, So worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Thence thro' the garden I was drawn— A realm of pleasance, many a mound, And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn Full of the city's stilly sound, And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks, Thick rosaries of scented thorn, Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. With dazed vision unawares From the long alley's latticed shade Emerged, I came upon the great Pavilion of the Caliphat. Right to the carven cedarn doors, Flung inward over spangled floors, Broad-based flights of marble stairs Ran up with golden balustrade, After the fashion of the time, And humour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. The fourscore windows all alight As with the quintessence of flame, A million tapers flaring bright From twisted silvers look'd to shame The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream'd Upon the mooned domes aloof In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd Hundreds of crescents on the roof Of night new-risen, that marvellous time, To celebrate the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Then stole I up, and trancedly Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes Amorous, and lashes like to rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl, Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone; The sweetest lady of the time, Well worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Six columns, three on either side, Pure silver, underpropt a rich Throne of the massive ore, from which Down-droop'd, in many a floating fold, Engarlanded and diaper'd With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirr'd With merriment of kingly pride, Sole star of all that place and time, I saw him—in his golden prime, THE GOOD HAROUN ALRASCHID!

I tied it to your wrist With a pretty pink bow, torn off By the first little tug of wind. I’m sorry. I jumped to catch it, but not soon enough. It darted away. It still looked large and almost within reach. Like a heart. Watch, I said. You squinted your little eyes. The balloon looked happy, waving Good-bye. The sky is very high today, I said. Red went black, a polka dot, Then not. We watched it, Even though we couldn’t Spot it anymore at all. Even after that.

Play the one about the family of the ducks where the ducks go down to the river and one of them thinks the water will be cold but then they jump in anyway and like it and splash around. No, I must play the one about the nervous man from Palestine in row 14 with a brown bag in his lap in which a gun is hidden in a sandwich. Play the one about the handsome man and woman standing on the steps of her apartment and how the darkness and her perfume and the beating of their hearts conjoin to make them feel like leaping from the edge of chance— No, I should play the one about the hard rectangle of the credit card hidden in the man’s back pocket and how the woman spent an hour plucking out her brows, and how her perfume was made from the destruction of a hundred flowers. Then play the one about the flower industry in which the migrant workers curse their own infected hands from tossing sheaves of roses and carnations into the back of the refrigerated trucks. No, I must play the one about the single yellow daffodil standing on my kitchen table whose cut stem draws the water upwards so the plant is flushed with the conviction that the water has been sent to find and raise it up from somewhere so deep inside the earth not even flowers can remember.

Nothing to do but scuff down the graveyard road behind the playground, past the name-stones lined up in rows beneath their guardian pines, on out into the long, low waves of plains that dissolved time. We'd angle off from fence and telephone line, through ribbon-grass that closed behind as though we'd never been, and drift toward the bluff above the river-bend where the junked pickup moored with its load of locust-skeletons. Stretched across the blistered hood, we let our dresses catch the wind while clouds above dimmed their pink to purple, then shadow-blue— So slow, we listened to our own bones grow.

Happy those early days! when I Shined in my angel infancy. Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O, how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train, From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm trees. But, ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way. Some men a forward motion love; But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.

Mondays Began with one plait loose, a pip in your teeth and late for Geography, lined and blank, facts to the right, tall stories left. To sail the heat in a weatherboard classroom boat with banana and vegemite colouring the air sargasso green. To ship ten thousand things on cursive seas to the edge of the known page —coffee, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves. To import small desires and grown-up needs in little packets of time for show and tell. To carve your name on the prow. To wait for the bell. In the Parlour only the French clock answered back. They sat cross-legged on the Persian carpet; destinations flashed by the smell of Marveer, lavender, dusty velvet. They opened their eyes in the olden times to fossick under the coffin flaps of the jarrah window seat for proper advice from disheveled magazines: nose straighteners, recipes, posture improvers, the runt who smoked and the chap who rowed. They didn’t see foresight’s guarded smile, they didn’t hear hindsight howl like a dog; the riddles were wordy, the clues were dumb: lopped head of a doll, silk wedding sleeve, gilt volumes, silverfish, and in the glass case, untouchable figurines locked away as grown-ups always seemed to be: shepherd and shepherdess on their marks, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Limoges? The real thing? Almond Trees cover Willunga Plains: like the misty breath of winter children, the blossom hovers. Dearth, says the black bark, splits to let scent through with open questions where when why what who? As for that earliest aroma fear, she’d  smell it, taste it, anywhere, one part in a million, pungent as coffee or smoke, already there in her mother’s milk. Against its grey unbeing she caught at talismans – black stones on a white plate, concrete nouns clattering out of thought. Marking time down the dead-end street to morning. Why was it always dark in the quiet hall? Through a memory crack of light an edge squeezed round the door: regret to inform stop missing in stop the air elliptic with tracer fire, familiar eyes glancing away, prismatic as flies’. Voices crept and huddled,where’s Daddy’s girl? He did come back, but who? They could not tell. Collections began. The tang of foreign coins lent her a lingo and currency for the unknown; Brother stuck down squares of expedited love with serrated edges. And they were invited to a fancy-dress ball with games of us and them. Father could not come for he was lame and Mother had to watch and wait not play so they learned dolls and trains and night and day and Snakes and Ladders and Hide and Seek. Knight’s gambit. Castle your king. Check. And when the black door opened and they knew threshold was famished, Brother stepped through. Now fear had her ID and her address. Best send an invitation. Tell her guest the lightest thing she served would ward off harm – a stick, a stone, a cloud of white perfume, thought itself, needing a go-between to say ‘this fragrance is like newborn skin, these quickening trees, like Mary’s aging cousin conceiving all baptism out of season’. She Collected Dictionaries as other women take up men and shelve them: manuals, grammars, Teach Yourself German, Malay, Italian, Swahili, Welsh, like a passion for clothes that would hang unworn in the dark, for peridots, garnets, amethysts, pearls in a shut case, nouns declined. Each unknown word shone with delicious fire and the alien phrases silked her skin with their genders and connotations. She might have been the end house on the waterfront of Macau welcoming every sailor in. But the longing for many tongues to part her lips – si, igen, ja, ah oui, yes, yes – was departure’s smile, a leaning to the wind that sweeps a glitter of light across the sea and sets a silvery chill at the neck. Quick, to those books guarding the mantelpiece, ISBNs snug as a span of days; to bread and fruit and sparkling wine. She had been given a cyclamen with scent, some new trick that married violet and rose, as if a flower should yearn to sing and the pink timbre tremble into quietest words. She touched her flesh and knew that it would fade as speech did and did not. And yet it was not language that she sought, nor the music of any meaning. An old allegiance drew her on beyond the first ground of thought and the idea even of silence to the fifth season which must at last return with its weather of recognition and its lost ends.

I came awake in kindergarten, under the letter K chalked neat on a field-green placard leaned on the blackboard's top edge. They'd caged   me in a metal desk—the dull word writ to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill when a boy I'd kissed drew me as a whiskered troll in art. On my sheet, the puffy clouds I made to keep rain in let torrents dagger loose. "Screw those who color in the lines," my mom had preached, words I shared that landed me on a short chair facing the corner's empty, sheetrock page. Craning up, I found my K high above. You'll have to grow to here, its silence said. And in the surrounding alphabet, my whole life hid— names of my beloveds, sacred vows I'd break. With my pencil stub applied to wall, I moved around the loops and vectors, Z to A, learning how to mean, how in the mean world to be. But while I worked the room around me began to smudge—like a charcoal sketch my mom was rubbing with her thumb. Then the instant went, the month, and every season smeared, till with a wrenching arm tug I was here, grown, but still bent to set down words before the black eraser swipes our moment into cloud, dispersing all to zip. And when I blunder in the valley of the shadow of blank about to break in half, my being leans against my spinal K, which props me up, broomstick straight, a strong bone in the crypt of meat I am.

Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady upon a white horse; Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, She shall have music wherever she goes.