A Woman Clothed in Words Read Online Free Page A

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    foraged for flowers
    and berries in the coppice
    and were always inventing
    sea-journeys and pilgrimages
    from which we returned tired and holy
    carrying the little ones on our shoulders

    ~~~

    and later he was happy
    sitting back and watching
    his seed carried over the water

People of the Bog
    Back there the days are darker
    and the nights are longer
    in the Old Country where the North
    won’t freeze you
    but your bones are aches
    and numb hands drop things
    on the chill tiled floor
    •
    and I remember once lighting
    the last lantern-candle
    we walked round the neighbours’
    begging a basket of coal or twigs
    but every house was cold and
    blank as ours
    ~~~
    Just last month Mam wrote me
    “look son, they are pulling
    the ancestors up from the bog”
    •
    well, I knew then I’d have
    to go over and see it done right
    •
    As I stood by and watched
    a leathery grandfather
    was brought up out of the peat
    the third that day
    they lay
    in a row on the stiff heather
    •
    they in their tattered skin
    and thongs, shackled by rings
    to their rusted broken dirks
    •
    “Rubbish” said Rob with
    the horses did the pulling
    and he unhitched Dolly and Ramon
    a pair of pretty greys
    “the chain’s heavy” he said
    “this is the end of the day”
    •
    and, you know, he’d expected
    some treasure like torcs or
    gold bangles
    or brooches with dark carnelians
    •
    or a great beaten-silver drowning bowl

Kahan
    Eyes are likened to sea
    but yours are gemstones
    are blue zircons......are not
    sapphire......are not turquoise
    are lapis
    are aquamarine
    •
    Inwardly looking on vineyards
    on olive groves hands
    that might plant grapes
    that might gather fruit
    in an orange grove turn
    the mimeographed pages
    of a history of your people
    in this prairie place
    •
    “over there is the farm
    I wish I could show you
    the house where I was born
    it was built of logs
    it had three rooms
    •
    the school was named Tiferes Israel”
    •
    Kahan
    •
    you are in love with the fields
    with the bluffs of poplar
    your hands
    your father’s hands
    cleared all that bush
    broke all that prairie
    under the hard plow
    you turn your gaze downwards
    as we pass the place
    that used to be your farm
    your farmer’s hands tremble
    on the pages of the book
    •
    later you stand at the gate of the small cemetery
    explain “I am of the house of the high priest
    may not walk in the acre of the dead
    my feet may not touch those places where
    my people are seeded in the prairie
    rich wheat in the prairie grass”
    •
    eyes are likened to lakewater
    to distance to air to sky
    •
    your eyes are gemstones
    set deep in the metal of your face
    are tourmaline
    are lapis lazuli

Untitled
    falling on gravel
    •
    my knees scratched I feel
    small pointed stones entering
    into my palm’s skin
    drawing a bloody pattern
    •
    I know the stones are reaching for the bones
    pushing themselves inwards
    biting in.....trying to unite
    with what is theirs
    theirs is the hard part of me
    ....the knobbles and shafts
    ....and small tarsals
    •
    I will cheat you rock and inside
    skeleton of earth
    with potent berries and mushrooms
    my bones will melt
    and when at last
    I go down into the dirt
    I shall be crumbled loam
    and a mulch of skin
    and leafy hair

Untitled
    “There was an old woman lived under a hill
    and if she’s not gone she’s living there still”
    •
    Adam standing on the mound’s top
    his arms outstretched, his arms
    stretched in accusing gesture
    He is railing on God The west
    seawind blowing his beard about
    his hair a tangle of knots and wisps
    •
    And I crouching beneath
    having been named a witch more than once
    and a whore many times more than that
    I am keeping quiet planning to have him
    again if I can.....I let the knowledge
    of myself rise up through the stony
    earth and grass as though
    I were a wisp of smoke rising through a chimney
    but there is no easy aperture
    I have to twist myself out
    round and between the snaggy
    roots of