Susan Mackervoy: Five Poems
25 August
25 August 1684: A very rainy forenoon close darck afternoon
Yellow lines of
willow branches reflected
alongside reflected
powerlines along
roughly diagonal slow
waves approximate
equivalence and
slight leaf sounds
sound an edge of
dryness. Out at the far
rim of this brightish
day, prepared to
consider itself
spacious, light grey
clouds mass (roil, even?)
as they back away.
10 March
10 March 1684: A hard frost such a sullen cold day as yesterday
A day all prods and stems,
sullen, chilly.
Bangs and clanks:
high-vis riverside workmen.
Blackthorn blossom,
utterly how things should be:
equally equal every small piece dazzling,
every small dazzling piece.
Dots of rain carried all ways,
white dots of petals scattered.
Hard engineering unmoved:
pipes grilles rivets.
7 February
7 February 1685: A hard, bitter black frost & a sad darck cold day. A very backward year for grass, blossoms etc & a very tedious long winter
A tedious wide field, a long cloud.
A shush, a shush of traffic noise.
A spindly, sniping, bitter cold.
A huddle of houses at the far end.
A long vale with its one little ditch or brook,
A busyness as it ushers itself away, uttering
A faint burble (xylophone or bells?).
A blankness: bare trees, grass infill.
A road ravine (A414) where vehicles chase.
A scattering of plastic bits and shreds,
A desiccated feel, a backwardness.
A craquelure of bramble, stalks and stones.
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Treading these thousand furlongs of sea
darkness on pathways I took as a child
from the hill of the suburb-town, their ribbons
seaming and crossing roads as roarers roll
by in metallic clouds, headlights in twos
and fours, ever more brilliant now the hours
are composting down to purple, maroon
and night extends across the sky to claim
again the unremarkable settlement, I am
movement among movements, these footfalls
mine or anyone’s, over an oceanic time arc:
sea-swallow’d, in my sustaining garments,
amid the replicated, intricate trajectories
of suburb-dwellers, transport flows.
Oozy, tremulous, this immersing gulf
of output and fulfilment, surge and drift
of crowds. No worries. Dream time approaches
on flickering television sets, in
luminous convenience stores and the town
that fizzed and filled around the road that
called it into being, outcome of journeys,
retreats now dispersedly from the sea-storm
into modest accommodations. No, indeed
I never truly left, and in the loyalty
programme’s categories of benefits
this the very least is bronze, brown, copper,
plum, tea, with blobs of light, fermenting
ink-rich at the sea bed, its gloom over-
and over-written with content, its epics
inscribed by packs of cyclists in the park and
threading their elaborate criss-crossing
manoeuvres I follow a small track through and up
to the suburb’s suburb, greeting a neighbour
who passes (long after his wave, I didn’t
know him in the dark) and with not so much
perdition as a hair get myself home.
Soft, heaped up, this ruin; verge, or berm.
Wrack, nudged in, thickly, on a tide.
Loose things, any things, marketed by the load.
Life garble. Meandering old piece of plain-
knitting, row on row on row. Anyway, look,
it’s only words. No need to bring a garland.
Each one slips into place, small, self-owned,
like a stitch does: an offer, no, mouth-shape, no,
less than that still. Always less, this undertow,
murmuring itself, resisting with the pull
of multitudes, inevitable crowds, of
lostness in the massing of leaves, or tiny waves, or
weed seedlings where seeds were blown, or
rubbish, some time, some time, breaking down.
About these poems
These poems are from Painted, spoken 37 (2023), printed in a limited edition.
To make sure you receive a future copy just send a stamped addressed A5 envelope to Richard Price, 23 Magnus Heights, Hampden Road, London, N8 0EL. Strictly first come first served.