Wolf Tongue (16 page)

Argent moon with bruised shawl

discreetly shines upon my frozen tongue tonight

and I am grinning handclap glad.

We loved so much the lunar light

on rawbone law or splashing in the marigold beds,

our gazing faces broken in the stream.

Taut, not taught, being kept from school

was a disgrace, single word ‘idiot’ chalked

on the yard wall: soaked in sleet, sliding

in snow beneath a raft of sighs, waiting

for the roar of an engine revved before

daybreak, as the world, the permanent wound

I would never know in sentence construction, fled

away from my heather-crashing feet, splash happy

kneefalls along the tumblestones,

whip-winged plovers shattering the dew.

Each day up here I am fiercely addressed

by the tips of the trees; said all I could

while heifers moaned in the stalls, clopping

of hooves my steaming, shitting

beast accompaniment. And these giant clouds.

Pity? Put it in the slurry with the rest of your woes.

I am Pearl, queen of the dale.

Down from the rain-soaked law

and the rim of the world

where even on misty nights

I can see the little lights

of Penrith and Kendal and, yes,

Appleby, and hear the clatter of unshoed

horses which pound like my heart,

I also sense the moss greened underwater

stones of the Eden to the west. I trim

the wick for mam’s asleep now, dad

long gone to Cumberland and work, and

read read my exercise books filled

with stories by Bar, my trout-catching

hero, dragons and space ships, sketches

in crayons you can’t buy anymore.

When I stand on the top road and bow

in sleet, knuckle-bunching cold, or

slide over dead nettles on snow, do

not mistake my flung out silhouetted

limbs for distant arches and viaducts.

I am not bringing you legendary feats

of sophisticated engineering. I in

worry eat my fist, soak my sandwich

in saliva, chew my lip a thousand times

without any bought impediment. Please

believe me when my mind says and

my eyes send telegraphs: I am Pearl.

So low a nobody I am beneath the cowslip’s

shadow, next to the heifers’ hooves.

I have a roof over my head, but none

in my mouth. All my words are homeless.

Grassblade glintstreak in one of the last mornings

before I come to meet you, Pearl,

as the rain shies. How bright and sudden the dogrose,

briefly touched by dew, flaming

between the deep emerald and smoky blue.

Dogrose, pink as Pearl’s lips, no

lipstick required, what’s that mam, no

city chemist or salon. We set

our colour charts in the rain

by feldspar heaved from the streambed;

cusloppe, burn peat in summer

and wild trampled marigolds.

Pearl, somewhere there is a stern receiver

and all accounts are open in the rain.

Once more through the heifer muck

and into the brilliant cooling of the watermint beds.

Sky to the west today, where you are, Pearl, is

a fantastic freak bruise which hurts the world.

Coward rain scared of our joy refuses to come.

Deep despair destroys and dents delight

now that I have pledged my future to you, Pearl,

from the edge of the roaring bypass, from

the home of the broken bottle and fiery

battleground of the sieged estate.

Skybrightness drove me

to the cool of the lake

to muscle the wind

and wrestle the clouds

and forever dream of Pearl.

O Pearl, to speak in sentences, using

all the best vowels and consonants, is argent sure.

Smoke drifts over slow as Pearl’s fingers

fanning through the borage groves

and the world vigorous again

in pursuit of renewal.

Pearl into Hexham

with cleft palate: the market, into Robbs

for curtains believe it or not, orders

written out by mam to be handed over, post

office adjacent to the war memorial,

bus station.

Billy driving Pearl home on the Allenheads bus, off

here, pet?, and round

the turning circle

by the heritage centre

to be opened by an adulterous prince.

Pearl saying when asked by a dale stranger,

‘Where’s the way to The Grapes?’:

a-a-a-a-a-a-a-.

Only the magnificent peewit more eloquent than Pearl.

Wonder Pearl distemper pale, queen

of Blanchland who rode mare Bonny

by stooks and stiles in the land

of waving wings and borage blue

and striving storms of stalks and stems.

Pearl, who could not speak, eventually

wrote: Your family feuds are ludicrous.

Only my eyes can laugh at you.

She handed over springwater under a stern look.

We fell asleep at Blackbird Ford

named by princes Bar and Paul of Sparty Lea.

We splashed and swam and made the brown trout mad.

Dawdled in our never-ending pleasure over

earth-enfolded sheephorns

by rivermist webs, half-hidden moss crowns.

Up a height or down the dale in mist or shine

in heather or heifer-trampled marigold

the curlew-broken silence sang its volumes.

Leaning on the lichen on the Leadgate Road,

Pearl said: a-a-a-a-a-, pointing with perfectly poised

index finger towards the rusty coloured dry stone wall

which contrasted so strongly with her milky skin.

The congenital fissure in the roof of her mouth

laid down with priceless gems, beaten lustrous copper

and barely hidden seams of gold.

Banged my right hand

against the chipped middle drawer

in the corner of the west-facing bedroom, sucking

home the knuckle blood.

Once more I rose

and kneeled, praying to God, and rose again,

my tongue in everlasting chains.

Bless him asleep with his yellow hair,

worn out with wandering, map-reading

the laws and lanes and trails.

Cowslips, our rushing ancient stream,

years of rain sweeping over the cairns,

beautifully soft, distinctly-shaped moss and lichen

enfolding the retrieved tumblestones,

steps to our great and mad adventures.

We laughed off cuts and bruises falling in the tadpole pools.

In my mind at the top of the valley,

roar of lead ore poured crashing

into the ghosts of now forsaken four-wheeled bogies

distinctly off the rails. They –

you call it government – are killing everything

now. Hard hats abandoned in heather. Locked-up

company huts

useless to bird, beast or humankind. Tags

in the rims: Ridley, Marshall,

McKinnon and Smith. Deserted

disconnected telephones, codes

and names I could not read.

Dead wires

left harping in the high wind

that always sang to me.

Day dawn dripping of dew

from those greenly dark feathers of fern, beneath

fragrant needles of fir and pine

as the stars swing into place

above our double gaze at heaven.

Pearl, I’m singing Fever to you

but still in the bland auditorium the stupid voices explode.

No one but you is listening.

We are back in the sheepfield chasing a rabbit again.

The rain is from the dark west tonight, raced along

by the sharply pushed-out breath of Pearl.

She has tramped with her cleft to the law, soaked cairn,

OS number recorded once for future use

but forgotten in the slap of heifer rumps.

In her little-fingered grip of the full-buttoned coat,

hair maddened by such a storm, lips pursed; my heroine, not

bothered with Kendal Mintcake, tugger of shirts and cuffs and hair.

She opens her swan mouth and rain pours in from north

and south and west, Atlantic squalls from Donegal.

They cannot lubricate her speech.

A baked canyon there, my Pearl.

At 3 I woke, rolled and twisted all my milky wrists

around the iron bedposts, heart ransomed to Pearl, her

Woolworth butterfly blue plastic clip, still made in Britain

then, her flighty bow.

Due east she looks, lashed by rain one side, yonder

just mist wet, heather splashes in the gale, towards the broken

ovens of manufacture and employment, and to the new units

in green and red, with almost literate noticeboards,

development corporation

fast-growing shrubs (emerald tops and silver undersides:

pound notes with roots), not with

the tramp, tramp, tramp

of men and women going home.

Transport of the rain where Pearl is, is

taken care of forever,

long after we have gone, into the cracked peat

we have not cut, taken to the channels,

onto becks and springs, to the borage groves

and streaming watermint.

At 4 I woke again

with torment, unpunished badness and unjudged blame.

That night, Pearl faced the lightning alone.

She could not even speak to encourage her own bravery.

Last seen by me tongue far out as it would go

just acting like a gutter or a gargoyle

praying for St Elmo’s fire up here on the Cushat Law

to surge her diction down the alphabet trail.

Good morning Pearl, good morning John,

good morning the Jesus Christ Almighty;

good morning Stephen, transferring

to the Alps from Lac de Madine:

I know your heart’s in Helpston today.

Pearl walked barefoot down the rain-soaked flags last night, fearful

of smoke and fire, with words on the slate: Where do I go

to bang MY head? Where will I find a workshop

sustained by Strasbourg grants

and European funny money, with instruments

modern enough to replace the canyon in the roof of my mouth?

Government? What does that mean?

Stephen, best friend of Barry, travelling in France, father

of Rachel and Timothy, husband of Sarah, what

does a government do? Can it make you speak?

I leak truth like a wound, sore not seen to.

Call me a scab if you wish, I’m still plain Pearl.

Wild Knitting was named after me, I know you did, Bar.

Every day – I wake at four – tongue fever grasps me

and I am possessed: though

my screen is blank and charmless to the human core

I have an unbending desire to marry consonants and vowels

and mate them together

in what you call phrases and sentences

which can become – imagine it – books!

I’d like to sit down with Stephen, inside the borage groves, sing him

my songs of the stream.

But of course I cannot.

My cuticles above singular fields

of harvested grain, when torched stubble is nowhere

near the heat of the burning grief

in my illiterate heart, when I can only hope to extinguish it

with unfettered tears, at four in the morning, when no one else

is awake.

I walk to the wetted garden where the lawn is short.

All the skies are leased anyway. Nothing is owned

by humans. It is an illusion nightmare.

You fall through the universe

clinging to unravelled knots and breaking strings.

John eating grass. Percy drinking brine.

No B&Q in my day. No proper ABC.

My mouth a wind-tunnel. I flew like a moth in its blast.

Take my hand and put me right.

This is the end of the bulletin from the end of the road.

Yes, I am not emitting articulate sound.

I take my stand and – deliberately – refuse to plead.

There is no adoration in my mute appeal.

My tongue a pad or cone for the trumpet’s bell.

Tongue-tied, bereft of ABC, I lap

and soak my whistle at the law’s rim.

In mood moments

I say smash down the chalkboard:

let it stay black.

Shake my chained tongue, I’ll fake a growl – a-a-a-a-a-.

Dog my steps, I am wet-toed to the spring

for mam’s tea: spam on Sundays

and chips if there is coal.

In the Orient I would be a good servant

willing to please.

Damping of strings my speciality,

an hired mourner

for the rest of my days: gazer

at umbrellas and rain.

No use for owt else up here

except wiping my legs of heifer muck

and fetching the four o’clock milk.

In the byre alone I weep

at the imagined contrivance

of straps and wires

locking my loll-tongue gargoyle head.

My muzzle gushes rain

and I wince when people speak to mam,

giving me their sideways look.

My eyes go furious and I stamp, stamp, stamp.

Pulse fever even in Hartfell sleet.

Loud tumult, what there is of my mind

tumbled into the lashing trees. Yes,

I love falling, caught momentarily

through each tall command of branches, amazed once more

at the borage blue sky

in another September afternoon

with tongue spouting, soaking the cones, thudding

to the very ground, disturbing

all the birds and worms and wasps and bees.

Don’t count on me for fun

among the towering cowslips,

but please don’t crush my heart.