The Visitations E-Book

Kathryn Simmonds

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 36

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Luminous and searching, tender and witty, The Visitations develops and deepens the themes that emerged in Kathryn Simmonds' acclaimed debut, Sunday at the Skin Launderette. Here are poems where the physical and metaphysical meet, where questions of new motherhood are set against those of faith and the larger conundrum of how to live. The tone is often simultaneously satirical and elegiac and the collection abounds with sudden moments of strange illumination: a lime tree strikes up a conversation; a life coach finds an old passport; an infant teeters on the brink of speech. 'A wonderful lazy music which never puts a foot wrong, like dancing with Gertrude Lawrence to a tune by Cole Porter.' - Hugo Williams

Leseprobe

Kathryn Simmonds

The Visitations

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend,Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter: @SerenBooks

The right of Kathryn Simmonds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Kathryn Simmonds 2013

ISBN: 978-1-78172-116-2

ISBN e-book: 978-1-78172-149-0

Kindle: 978-1-78172-150-6

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph: Jean Pagliuso

from ‘Poultry Suite’ Buff #6 2010.

Silver gelatin print on handmade Kaji paper

Printed in Bembo by Bell and Bain, Glasgow

Contents

I

Sunday Morning

Oversleeping

April

The New Mothers

The Visitations

On the Island of San Michele

The Reluctant Natives

What I Did in My Summer Holidays

Self-Portrait with Washing-up Glove

The Unborn

Heartsongs

Madonna of the Pomegranate

In Service

Hotel Pool

When Six O’Clock Comes and Another Day has Passed

In a Church

Elegy for the Living

Experience

II

Life Coach Variations

III

Apocryphal

To her Unconscious

The Daydreams

Hermits

Late December

Love Song in a Bleached Room

The Grudge

The Hem

In the Woods

Conversation with a Lime Tree

Lucid

The Great Divide

Kitsch

In Brief

Forgiveness

Nocturne

23

Acknowledgements

How do you change the weather in the blood?

– Elaine Feinstein

I

Sunday Morning

Since I’ve stopped praying

I’ve got so much more done:

the fridge is cleaner, I read more fiction,

the telephone is less often off the hook.

Since I’ve done away with God

I’ve done the bathroom up

and tried a dozen different recipes.

Since I’ve stopped considering the nature

of the soul, the infinite, all that,

I’ve found the joy of gardening;

I garden without concern

for the intricate glory of the Hollyhock.

The news is always on, the multitudes

keep dying, and what’s one less prayer

circling the stratosphere?

He’ll find me, if he chooses,

he’ll lift me like a woolly two-year-old,

secure me to the fold. Meanwhile

I’m eating chocolates in bed,

the words of the psalms dissolving like an old dream,

I’m right here with a magazine,

– Shock New Pictures, All Your TV Favourites –

the church bells making a distant din,

the duvet warm and comforting,

the tumble dryer just spinning, and spinning.

Oversleeping

And there are the clothes you dropped, the arms of a green shirt

raised in surrender, the slough of nylon

and a dress of apricot wool.

Sit up and see the sheets fine-wired with pubic hair and eyelashes,

skin cells scattered like flakes of prehistory.

Your clothes have been going out of fashion,

quickly like the turning of a pear, slowly like a bone bleaching.

No matter,

reclaim the leather boots you loved so much,

zip them right up to the knee and walk;

you are Jairus’ daughter, passing through

the convalescent house, its shelves of misremembered books,

its shivers of dust.

What else is there to do but open windows, let the outside tumble in

like washing from a glorious machine?

The day is half over, but still blue. Step out and balance

on the ledge. Below a brown bird darts

over the garages

and is gone,

another yanks a worm from its clay bed and flies with it –

fly worm, fly!

The pillow-creases in your cheek smooth to make you young again.

Your leg hair stands to gold attention. Courage now, step out,

feel the plummet, then the catch and you’re up,

swimming in cold, eyes streaming.

There is the park where you broke your wrist, there is the church

where you first met God and the playground of children

whose children are running through cities now, as the river

runs, a silver speck, coursing underneath

the disappearing viaduct, running through the valley, past

fields where horses gather, trapped in their nature.

The houses reposition themselves

and there are your arms, the arms that used to be useless,

parting pale belts of cloud.

April

Spring again

But from where no telling

Sweet as the spring

That went before