137 Mother poems

She sat down below a thorn, Fine flowers in the valley; And there she has her sweet babe born, And the green leaves they grow rarely. "Smile na sae sweet, my bonnie babe," Fine flowers in the valley,

Mother Dear, never apologize for nettles I yanked in fury from Lottie Shoop’s side yard — they stung me into seeing fairy mosses lilypad her middened juniper, the quivering gobble of her chin, teacup clicking dentures as she sprang up into her wattle hut and broke a rib of aloe vera — gel belling the top of that claw goblet. It didn’t cool the sting, and yet, noticing sunshine thumbing plums in a string catch-all — I was already well.

Standing in front of a mirror, my mother tells me she is ugly says the medication is making her fat. I laugh & walk her back to the bed. My mother tells me she is ugly in the same voice she used to say no woman could love you& I watch her pull at her body & it is mine. My heavy breast. My disappointing shape. She asks for a bowl of plain broth & it becomes the cup of vinegar she would pour down my throat. Everyday after school, I would kneel before her. I would remove my clothes & ask her to mark the progress. It’s important that I mention, I truly wanted to be beautiful for her. In my dreams I am thin & if not thin, something better. I tell my mother she is still beautiful & she laughs. The room fills with flies. They gather in the shape of a small boy. They lead her back to the mirror, but my reflection is still there.

Pull in your feet, little darling, so I can kiss your wee trotters while I fold under a toe and another one underneath. I bend a little piggie. I bend another little piggie And look at that naughty little piggie that is still sticking out. Now, now, my treasure, there is work to be done here. Your toes like fairy thimbles, the blossom of the foxglove. Like a calf that is spancelled or a hobble on a chicken, there will be swaddlings of silk on the feet of my dear. That my daughter now shrieks like a blue jay is no matter, she will sway in the future like a bamboo on a windy day or like a willow sapling. So I bend under the big toe and another toe after to form a foot like a lotus about to unfold. Poor Cliodhna has flat feet. Maire has huge ones. Peggy’s are like spades and Niamh’s like two rakes. Just hold still, my dearie, while I tighten your bindings. I’m only your mammy doing my very best for your sake

My mother in her dress of red Viyella, teetering like a tiny idol on three-inch lacquered spikes, chignon dressed with little gold- throated bells that chirped more sweetly than the cricket, held her small, perfect hands to the torrent pouring from the slots. Money went like water through our fingers: was dammed by budgets, released, then abruptly gone at the China Starr, that grotto, festooned with red and vivid lanterns. Dark as the inside of a limousine, that saloon was where our lives, dulled by the copper barons, were cleansed, where we bade good-bye to the limp and stutter of bad goods, to the wince of the creaky rocker, to the vast grandmother dying in its clutch, to the dirty, wrinkled ones and tens pieced together to cover the week. Hello, we said, to the beautiful dark starlit bar and the luxury therein: the runcible spoons with their slippery cargo: the snarled silk of tinned bean sprout, the wrinkled flame of the dried lily. Hunched over our beakers of jasmine tea, we let the exotic rinse over us—impractical and non-negotiable.

My mother was not impressed with her beauty; once a year she put it on like a costume, plaited her black hair, slick as cornsilk, down past her hips, in one rope-thick braid, turned it, carefully, hand over hand, and fixed it at the nape of her neck, stiff and elegant as a crown, with tortoise pins, like huge insects, some belonging to her dead mother, some to my living grandmother. Sitting on the stool at the mirror, she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her, as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was weighted and bound in its mask. Vaseline shined her eyebrows, mascara blackened her lashes until they swept down like feathers; her eyes deepened until they shone from far away. Now I remember her hands, her poor hands, which, even then were old from scrubbing, whiter on the inside than they should have been, and hard, the first joints of her fingers, little fattened pads, the nails filed to sharp points like old-fashioned ink pens, painted a jolly color. Her hands stood next to her face and wanted to be put away, prayed for the scrub bucket and brush to make them useful. And, as I write, I forget the years I watched her pull hairs like a witch from her chin, magnify every blotch—as if acid were thrown from the inside. But once a year my mother rose in her white silk slip, not the slave of the house, the woman, took the ironed dress from the hanger— allowing me to stand on the bed, so that my face looked directly into her face, and hold the garment away from her as she pulled it down.

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984 She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught me between the hammer and the block To face the music. Teach me now to listen, To strike it rich behind the linear black. 1 A cobble thrown a hundred years ago Keeps coming at me, the first stone Aimed at a great-grandmother's turncoat brow. The pony jerks and the riot's on. She's crouched low in the trap Running the gauntlet that first Sunday Down the brae to Mass at a panicked gallop. He whips on through the town to cries of 'Lundy!' Call her 'The Convert'. 'The Exogamous Bride'. Anyhow, it is a genre piece Inherited on my mother's side And mine to dispose with now she's gone. Instead of silver and Victorian lace, The exonerating, exonerated stone. 2 Polished linoleum shone there. Brass taps shone. The china cups were very white and big— An unchipped set with sugar bowl and jug. The kettle whistled. Sandwich and tea scone Were present and correct. In case it run, The butter must be kept out of the sun. And don't be dropping crumbs. Don't tilt your chair. Don't reach. Don't point. Don't make noise when you stir. It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead, Where grandfather is rising from his place With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head To welcome a bewildered homing daughter Before she even knocks. 'What's this? What's this?' And they sit down in the shining room together. 3 When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives. 4 Fear of affectation made her affect Inadequacy whenever it came to Pronouncing words 'beyond her'.Bertold Brek. She'd manage something hampered and askew Every time, as if she might betray The hampered and inadequate by too Well-adjusted a vocabulary. With more challenge than pride, she'd tell me, 'You Know all them things.' So I governed my tongue In front of her, a genuinely well- Adjusted adequate betrayal Of what I knew better. I'd naw and aye And decently relapse into the wrong Grammar which kept us allied and at bay. 5 The cool that came off sheets just off the line Made me think the damp must still be in them But when I took my corners of the linen And pulled against her, first straight down the hem And then diagonally, then flapped and shook The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind, They made a dried-out undulating thwack. So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand For a split second as if nothing had happened For nothing had that had not always happened Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go, Coming close again by holding back In moves where I was x and she was o Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks. 6 In the first flush of the Easter holidays The ceremonies during Holy Week Were highpoints of our Sons and Lovers phase. The midnight fire. The paschal candlestick. Elbow to elbow, glad to be kneeling next To each other up there near the front Of the packed church, we would follow the text And rubrics for the blessing of the font. As the hind longs for the streams, so my soul. . . Dippings. Towellings. The water breathed on. The water mixed with chrism and with oil. Cruet tinkle. Formal incensation And the psalmist's outcry taken up with pride: Day and night my tears have been my bread. 7 In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. 'You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?' His head was bent down to her propped-up head. She could not hear but we were overjoyed. He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened. 8 I thought of walking round and round a space Utterly empty, utterly a source Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place In our front hedge above the wallflowers. The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high. I heard the hatchet's differentiated Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh And collapse of what luxuriated Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all. Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole, Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere, A soul ramifying and forever Silent, beyond silence listened for.

Bending, I bow my head and lay my hands upon her hair, combing, and think how women do this for each other. My daughter’s hair curls against the comb, wet and fragrant— orange parings. Her face, downcast, is quiet for one so young. I take her place. Beneath my mother’s hands I feel the braids drawn up tight as piano wires and singing, vinegar-rinsed. Sitting before the oven I hear the orange coils tick the early hour before school. She combed her grandmother Mathilda’s hair using a comb made out of bone. Mathilda rocked her oak wood chair, her face downcast, intent on tearing rags in strips to braid a cotton rug from bits of orange and brown. A simple act Preparing hair. Something women do for each other, plaiting the generations.

My mother's voice is at my throat —"Try a scarf in the neckline"— and on my lips: "Just a little lipstick." Today I'm wearing both. My "mother's voice," pitched high, carries reprimand and care: "No boom on the table!" My daughter swats me as I carry her away from the dearest activity on earth—sticks, stones, struck as if the coffee table were a flint. "Barbarian," I croon in heels. "What's that?" she asks and rips a nylon with a fingernail. She cries at the turtleneck pulled over her head. "I'll give you something to cry about!" I hush, succeeding for another day, or an hour—another minute late for work. Tonight I'll choose a lullaby: "Bluebird at my window," Mother sang to me, a voice that could broom sorrow through the door . . . A decal staggered on the painted bureau, blue wing seeking, finding no way out.

Shoulders knobbed against a slat-backed chair, the temples tugged, a pull at the nape, you felt the up- sweep as she smoothed the fine wisps back and tucked yank into yank and a third into that until the consecutive dodges of thumbs and first fingers gathered, fraying and filing to their end—ended in an ornament that, suspended, looked ridiculous, even on a child who mostly set forth with what was called a “finished” look, some loose ends in order where others were not and a slight weight below the nape’s pull. The view others had of it was invisible to you. It made something there where there would have been a blank—now instead a kind of face sent from woman to woman like a duty, an obstinate duty to pattern. It’s too simple to see one thing rather than another, a wish protruding once it’s been suppressed, a vise that holds a thought in its proper place until it bobs to the surface of a generally balmy sea. Women and woman only a letter away—a strand gets mixed, then mixed right out of the heaven of perfect fit; one kind of accident turns into another. The whole head throbs for days. Black and white are woven into gray the way hyperbole has no chance once it’s juxtaposed to reason—negation just a thread among the available options and hope itself apparent there in the very notion a made thing can last. Tougher, coarser, split weave in the years. Shorter, longer, shorter, the brain bound to its anchor. The brushed-out waves with their rick-rack shadows, a thread inside the case, the case inside the locket, the locket beneath the yoke. All the effort to save in itself a form of loss. You can tell a story many ways. You can leave something out or put something in; you can fool yourself and hide. You can shake out the form or try to manage every wisp, but the latter will only bring you pain. You went under the hand and eye of another and the tether cannot be undone.