The Ponies

Weird Sisters are so pleased to share another poem by Maria Jastrzebska with you today. We must admit, it evokes some rather scary memories of introducing partners to disapproving parents...

The Ponies

My mother scrutinises

everything about you, leaning forward 

to see better 

as if she could not believe

her eyes.

I've brought some photos

of our recent holiday:

amateurish shots

of the New Forest, leaf and fern

just starting to turn bronze,

the two of us wearing warm jackets,

piglets rooting and of course

the ponies.

In all the guide books it tells you:

Remember these are wild ponies.

Never stand between a mare

and her foal.

And you are sitting on a chrome chair

in the new Polish cafe we've all come to,

waiting for pierogi stuffed

with cabbage and wild mushrooms,

under the arty sketches 

of semi-nude women, your chair

between my mother's chair and mine.

   Maria Jastrzębska 

                            From Syrena (Redbeck Press 2004)

The Gleaners

As there is a hint of Autumn in the air, it seems appropriate to post this poem by Maggie Redding. It was inspired by her first sight of the painting Le Rappel des Glaneuses by Jules Breton, which depicts peasant women returning from fields where they have picked and sifted the leavings of grain. This back-breaking labour was allowed only until dusk on the last day of harvest, representing a substantial contribution to the diet of desperately poor families.  

                                                          

                                                            The Gleaners                                                                        

 by Maggie Redding

For the poor, the leftovers, the gleanings.

The rich call, not merely the tune, 

But whole symphonies of greed.

For one day, the stubbled fields are yielded to

Desperate women, broad-faced, broad-shouldered,

Scrabbling for ears of wheat for their winter bread.

Daylight fades. The pace increases.

Only till dusk permission is granted

To gather their meagre harvest.

The uncouth summons of the landlord’s man

Straightens bent backs, releases aching arms.

Women and children move to the gate.

Sharp stalks prickle bare feet.

With sun- and breeze-burned faces,

They carry home, gratefully, their gleanings.

Resigned, wistful glances are cast

Towards the last glimpse of light.

Now let winter and landlord do their worst.

I didn't know I looked cross

This week Maggie Redding has given us a little lyric dialogue between young and old. Hope you enjoy it!

P.S. It has to be said that sometimes Weird Sisters in general do look a bit cross, but only when pondering deeply.

Why do old ladies look cross?

‘Why do old ladies look cross, Grandma?

Tell me, why do they always look grim?’

‘I didn’t know, Annabel, that I looked cross.

Is it the lines from my nose to my chin?’

‘You don’t know you look cross, Grandma?

You are old and will die before long.’

‘It isn’t the thought of dying, Annabel,

that’s the cause of the frowns to be strong.

It’s the sadness of living.

The world is all wrong

With hatred and greed

The hungry to feed

It’s been going on for so long.’

‘Is there nothing that’s good in the world?

Is it all helplessness and despair?

Please give me some hope in my life, Grandma.

Don’t tell me it’s beyond repair.

Is there something you’re forgetting?

There’s my generation to ask.

You can leave it to us.

We’ll make no fuss.

But just get on with the task.’

‘I had hoped, Annabel, to leave the world

better than when I was  born.

I feel that I’ve failed, although I have tried.

It turned out to be a false dawn.’

‘I think you see it all wrong, Grandma

Judging’s not really for you?

‘I don’t think it’s for me,

We don’t need to see

and measure the good that we do.’

Maggie Redding

January 2018 

Shade, sustenance, beauty

Today is Palm Sunday. Many thanks to Sylvia Daly for this poem, which compares a Catholic child's experience with the reality of date palms. Love it.  

 Palm Sunday

How can I trust them again?

They gave me a dry,

dead spike of a leaf,

tortured into the shape

of a cross.

My childish fingers

unfolded the sharp, tough frond.

I struggled to see

the triumph of the day,

waving my acrid spear

in jubilation.

Older and wiser, I saw a real palm tree.

Graceful fronds arched with sensuous curve,

fruit hung in pregnant bunches,

all giving shade, sustenance, beauty.

My religion had killed this vision.

Twisted the beauty to fit the wish of

foolish, clever men, who choked

the spirit with their efforts.

How can I trust them again?

Sylvia Daly

All I saw was lit up by your body

This week we're delighted to share another beautiful poem by award-winning poet Christine Webb. 

First published in 2011, her remarkable work Catching Your Breath 'celebrates and mourns her partner of forty years, who died in 2006.'

Knowledge

That moment suspended in the dull room

above the streets of the January town

(a branch pecked on the window, but the curtains

shut out the garden of dead chrysanthemums)

– undressing for each other the first time

all I saw was lit up by your body,

its gold and ivory. Such knowledge to bring away,

to carry wrapped through the streets, past naked trees,

into the school where heating pipes clanked and gossiped,

where blackboards expressed decorous equations,

where at the corners of corridors we might breathe in

to pass each other, but did not speak or glance

in case the doorways should break into leaf,

in case the books we carried should burst into flame.

Christine Webb 

  

The spectre at your feast

 This week, Sylvia Daly's poem hints at a different Christmas meaning - which seems appropriate, as this year it's definitely going to be a different kind of Christmas for us all. Thought-provoking.

P.S. Nevertheless, we wish you all a cosy, healthy and safe Christmas!

Christmas Visitor

I am the dark Christmas Angel,

the spectre at your feast.

Watching over celebrations

that change you to gorging beast.

Your God, reduced and captured

in swaddling clothes and stall,

gentle, safe, rendered harmless.

Offending none and pleasing all.

This is not the Christ of my world,

doe-eyed baby smiling sweet.

My Christ suffers, works for justice,

speaks with passion, acts in heat.

Is there a place for such as I

at this false, festive season

With myriad gifts, glittering trim

and drink to lose all reason?

Yes, I’ll attend your vulgar romp,

though not atop your burdened tree.

A shadow fleeting, movement quick,

a flicker in the eye, knows me.

Women don't write, he said

The remarkable poet Christine Webb has kindly allowed us to use this thoughtful and thought-provoking piece from her 2004 debut collection, After Babel. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

 It was not the fruit

It was not the fruit she took

but the wood

not its flesh she chewed

but a pulpy fibre

(warm in that cavity

so various, ingenious

close to the brain

mother of language

thought shaper)

– spat out, finally

moulded and flattened

into rough leaves

a little bigger than the figs'

and drier

and for ink?

there were the experimental

berries, saps – ground

insects, even –

or the last resort,

the slow ooze

of red.

No problem of what

to say: creation 

all around, bursting

into words... In The 

Beginning... 

A shadow 

fell across the page as 

she squatted, rapt. – Women

don't write, he said

And screwed up her bible

Christine Webb

from After Babel, pub. Peterloo, 2004

Killing our young

Sylvia Daly continues the blog's theme of remembrance of war this week. To our mind, her use of the traditional sonnet form, her choice of language and imagery echo the startling, subversive poetry that came out of the First World War  - except here, Sylvia speaks as a woman and a mother.

 War Cry!

A Sonnet by Sylvia Daly

Why do old men send our young to make war?

Flag-waving, bugle blown patriot lies,

teaching them hatred and how to abhor

masks envy of youth in manly disguise.

Women face death every time they give birth.

Blood, sweat and tears and great pain all endured

to give another a life on this earth,

and then watch, as to death each son is lured.

The final insult, killing our young.

Rending the bond we have forged with our blood.

We’d defend to the death life from us sprung

by pruning old wood, not the sprouting bud.

The murderous scream of the mother’s rage

is strangled by warlords through every age.

Sylvia Daly

MRS WILLIAM MORRIS

This week, which coincides with William Morris's 124th Deathday on 3rd October, we're delighted to feature a humorous poem by Sylvia Daly. Its subject, Jane Morris (born Jane Burden) is familiar to us all. We've seen her in many a rich Pre-Raphaelite fantasy - a sulky-mouthed, thoughtful woman, gazing past us in a kind of dreamy, wordless sadness. But Jane has her own story. 

She was born in 1839 to a poor working class family: her parents were probably illiterate. After being recruited as a model by the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who spotted her in the audience at a Drury Lane theatre, she married William Morris, the influential textile designer, poet, novelist and social activitist. She didn't love him (and later had a long affair with Rossetti). Jane had two children with Morris. She and her daughters went on to become pioneering textile artists themselves, reviving ancient techniques to produce exquisite embroidery. Credit for the women's designs was given to William Morris, of course - 'in the interests of commercial success.' Keenly intelligent and self-educated, she became proficient in French, Italian, music and the arts of conversation, her queenly air enabling her to move comfortably among the upper classes. She may even be the original Eliza Doolittle. 

In this poem, Sylvia imagines that Jane is getting bored with her husband's elaborate Arts and Craft-style interior decorations...

Mrs William Morris

(A villanelle inspired by

Carol Ann Duffy’s Collection

“The World’s Wife)

My small demand you cannot hear,

Acanthus leaves depress me so.

Magnolia walls, I beg, this year.

Your art rules every choice I fear,

in many rooms I cannot go.

My small demand you cannot hear.

Whispering my request, I peer

in rooms where rose and willow grow.

Magnolia walls, I beg, this year.

Night after night I shed a tear,

as friends your patterns bold you show.

My small demand you cannot hear.

I warn, there’s one who does not jeer,

he comforts me when my tears flow.

Magnolia walls, I beg, this year.

It’s true, Rossetti grows more dear,

for he says yes, instead of no.

My small demand

 you cannot hear.

Magnolia walls, I beg, this year.

Sylvia Daly