words over the water

I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine
Liz Lochhead

I wouldn’t thank you for a Valentine.
I won’t wake up early wondering if the postman’s been.
Should 10 red-padded satin hearts arrive with sticky sickly saccharine
Sentiments in very vulgar verses I wouldn’t wonder if you meant them.
Two dozen anonymous Interflora red roses?
I’d not bother to swither over who sent them!
I wouldn’t thank you for a Valentine.

Scrawl SWALK across the envelope
I’d just say ‘ Same Auld story
I canny be bothered deciphering it –
I’m up to hear with Amore!
The whole Valentine’s Day Thing is trivial and commercial,
A cue for unleashing clichés and candyheart motifs to which I personally am not partial.’
Take more than singing Telegrams, or pints of Chanel Five, or sweets,
To get me ordering oysters or ironing my black satin sheets.
I wouldn’t thank you for a Valentine.

If you sent me a solitaire and promises solemn,
Took out an ad in the Guardian Personal Column
Saying something very soppy such as ‘Who Loves Ya, Poo?
I’ll tell you, I do, Fozzy bear, that’s who!’
You’d entirely fail to charm me, in fact I’d detest it
I wouldn’t be eighteen again for anything, I’m glad I’m past it.
I wouldn’t thank you for a Valentine.

If you sent me a single orchid, or a pair of Janet Reger’s in a heart-shaped box and declared
your Love Eternal
I’d say I’d rather not be caught dead in them they were politically suspect and I’d rather
something thermal.
If you hired a plane and blazed our love in a banneracross the skies;
If you bought me something flimsy in a flatteringly wrong size;
If you sent me a postcard with three Xs and told me how you felt
I wouldn’t thank you, I’d melt.

Coupling
Fleur Adcock

On the wall above the bedside lamp
a large crane-fly is jump-starting
a smaller crane-fly – or vice versa.
They do it tail to tail, like Volkswagens:
their engines must be in their rears.

It looks easy enough. Let’s try it.

For A Wedding
Kate Clanchy

Cousin, I think the shape of a marriage
is like the shelves my parents have carried
through Scotland to London, three houses;

is not distinguished, fine, French-polished,
but plywood and tatty, made
in the first place for children to batter,

still carrying markings in green felt-tip,
but always, where there are books
and a landing, managing to fit;

that marriage has lumps like
their button-backed sofa, constantly;
shortly, about to be stuffed;

and that love grows fat
as their squinting cat, swelling
round as a loaf from her basket.

I wish you years that shape, that form,
and a pond in a Sunday, urban garden;
where you’ll see your joined reflection tremble,

stand and watch the waterboatmen
skate with ease across the surface tension.

Her
Jackie Kay

I had been told about her.
How she would always, always.
How she would never, never.
I’d watched and listened
but I still fell for her,
how she always, always.
How she never, never.

In the small brave night,
her lips, butterfly moments.
I tried to catch her and she laughed
a loud laugh that cracked me in two,
but then I had been told about her,
how she would always, always.
How she would never, never.

We two listened to the wind.
We two galloped at a pace.
We two, up and away, away, away.
And now she’s gone,
like she said she would go.
But then I had been told about her –
how she would always, always.

Infelice
Stevie Smith

Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess,
He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand,
He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming,
Leaving my alone with a private meaning,
He loves me so much, my heart is singing.
Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening
They said: Sir Rat is dining, is dining, is dining,
No madam, he left no messafe, ah how his silence speaks,
He loves me too much for words, my heart is singing.
The Pullman seats are here, the tickets for Paris, I am waiting,
Presently the telephone rings, it is his valet speaking,
Sir Rat is called away, to Scotland, his constituents,
(Ah the dreadful duchess, but he loves me best)
Best pleasure to the last, my heart is singing,
One night he came, it was four in the morning,
Walking slowly upstairs, he stands beside my bed,
Dear darling, lie beside me, it is too cold to stand speaking,
He lies down beside me, his face is like the sand,
He is in a sleep of love, my heart is singing.
Sleeping softly softly, in the morning I must wake him,
And waking he murmurs, I only came to sleep.
The words are so sweetly cruel, how deeply he loves me,
I say them to myself alone, my heart is singing.
Now the sunshine strenghtens, it is ten in the morning,
He is so timid in love, he only needs to know,
He is my little child, how can he come if I do not call him,
I will write and tell him everything, I take the pen and write:
I love you so much, my heart is singing.

The Widow’s Mite: Effie, Dumfries, August 1916
Gillian Allnutt

Bring out the boots that will no longer need to be repaired.

Bring them to the bare hillside.

Lovely is the hairbell.
Still, frail.

I will take up my anger like a torn floorboard,
a bed.

‘Thy will be done.’ I said.

Dust of the August afternoon is everywhere.

Dust motes.

I’ll gather all the holes together here.

Comment
Dorothy Parker

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Rumania.

The Fish
Deryn Rees Jones

I go to sleep with the taste of you, and this is not the first time

for you are too much with me. And these are your hands,
in the darkness. This is the rough shape of
your face, only. Your hair, your ear, your thigh.
And then, out of nowhere, your tongue like a hot little fish
a blue glint, glinted electrics,
a fish accustomed to basking I suppose,
in the clear waters of some tropical isle.
Not an ordinary fish, not a fish I could haul from the waters, or not easily.
Not a fish accustomed to travelling in solitude,
but one used to a rainbow accompaniment,
one used to the sea’s depths, and her sulky harbourings.
One used to the rockpools and the undertow, the colour of the sands.
And, how suddenly you swam into me!

And was it your mouth, or the memory of your mouth?
Or was it a fish? Whatever it was, it was there.
There in the bloodstream, bruising artery, vein,
as it swam,
heading, no doubt, for the heart.
Then you stopped it,

for you knew it would have killed me,
and it basked in the blue pools of my elbow, where you
stroked it for a while;
then you asked it to dart, from my hips up my spine,
you asked it to wander to the tilt of my breast bone
where tickled, like a salmon, it leapt
it leapt;
you asked it to journey from my shoulder to my neck, to that soft place
behind my ears
where you solemnly forbade it, asked it instead to
rest for a while, and then turn back,
saying Fish, fish, my brilliant fish
and something I can’t
remember now

on the furthermost tip of my tongue, like a dream.