Books, Poems, Thoughts
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Outlined against the fields, inevitable as landscape, a kerchiefed woman and a donkey trudge the dusty path, to where they fight the stubborn earth for food. Anchoress, she treads her daily silences, mantras iterating on her children; she knows no joy in exercise of muscle, spread of sky or shades of green on ten-mile tramps
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After Mark Gertler’s painting of 1916 Here we go round the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, here we go round the merry-go-round in saecula saeculorum: on Hampstead Heath by threes we turn, no way forward – we never learn – fixed for ever, still and moving – our nannies nod their heads approving; trapped, we look in the
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I heard that life is no rehearsal, But performance of the play; Yet I have spent so long in learning lines I missed my time and lost the way. So I become a critic in the wings, Mocking observer of what others do and say, And dream of being the deus ex machine In the
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A blackbird alone in the dying sun’s footlights sings to a backdrop of indigo blue; for the sound of its voice, for the sake of the singing, it plays out the longest day of the year. Perched on the rooftop, stop-out blackbird, late home, carousing, careless of time, emptying its throat till its heart is
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Brompton Oratory, a hot lunch-time in July, a baby being received into the Catholic Church and Catholic upper-crust society: dressed-up, a group stands round the font. Otherwise the building’s almost empty, save a scattering of oddballs dotted round the nave, the occasional stray tourist fleeing from the sun. A little girl in blue-and-white-striped dress escapes
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I started meeting Auntie Edie in the mirror, so rooted out the tiny photographs to check: her nose and lips were coarser, but the shape’s the same … Great Aunt Edith – to us the funny snob who came to tea on Thursdays and ‘wasn’t used to children’. Shapeless and sagging, she’d never worn a bra, had
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She had a beautiful mother, serene in a sepia photograph who cried over every debt; her father was happy-go-lucky, a charmer and very bright; a Methodist grandfather killed himself; her grandmother’s hair grew down to her knees. Cycling the three miles to grammar school in a uniform sizes too large with a second-hand hockey stick
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The flesh drained back on to the pillow so his nose poked up surprising, sharp, a single flower placed beside his head, below his green-pyjama’d shoulders – fragile, like a child laid lovingly to sleep. There were signs his nose had bled – otherwise he looked tidy and so still. His eyes were closed, his mouth fixed
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I’ve done his shirts. Now I’m on the hankies. I learnt on these. My mother thought I couldn’t harm the plain white squares. He had plenty anyway. First you flatten out and heat away the creases, then fold in half, do both sides, fold again, ending with a steaming, neatly cornered wedge. Clean hankies conjure
Virginia Rounding: Author, editor, proofreader, indexer 