Sam Chittenden

POETRY

By Sam Chittenden (writing as Beth Somerford)

 A Garden (for J.C.)
  
  
 A garden, ’89, a new moon’s swell
 turned everything into a silhouette;
 a wind sliced through the silence, skirted walls,
 but you were safely tucked inside my coat.
 The shadows of that garden - charcoal, black - 
 offset kaleidoscopes of blessings sung.
 Outside - hard lines, the certainty of brick;
 within - soft prayers for safety on my tongue.
  
 Remember, son, I’ve watched your life unfold
 like leavened loaves: parts honey-sweet, the bees
 our friends; parts rough - I’ve swabbed your tears, your blood.  
 This evening as you cross the northern seas
 the moon shows us again her brightest face,
 and there are new shapes shifting into place.  

 SOMETIMES YOU ARE THE WOOD
  
 Sometimes - yes - you are the wood, 
 the fuel ablaze - glorious and hurting; 
 glorious in your hurting 
  
 And there will be a time 
 when you are burnt to nothing, 
 or almost nothing -
 To a palmful of minerals and to vapour; 
 a name that echoes in a daughter’s ear.
 This is how it must be.
  
 But you might also be the wick, the fuse,
 The match of Jericho.
  
 Sometimes you are the wood, 
 And others, you are not wood, but tree
 Standing in a place once charred by fire.
  
  
 This is what you need to understand  

 Bed
 After the sculpture Divan Bed by Mona Hatoum 
  
 It is as if she sleeps on a girder;
 fearful of falling, of moving, lest 
 she give her awakeness away.
 Hemmed in by scaffolding, she 
 has poured herself onto the bed;
 posted her limbs in position.
 She lies a thousand feet above 
 the bedroom carpet; her thighs 
 mottled by steel, arms adorned 
 with thumbprint bracelets. 
 Most nights there is a muddling 
 of limbs, a voiceless barter, 
 like the scrabble of flyovers.
 Her ribs are iron struts, her hips 
 a hiding place.  She has turned 
 herself inside out.  She knows 
 if he knew, he would crack her
 like a fortune cookie. 

The Colourist of Artificial Fish
  
 The trick is understanding line of sight:
 the upper is mud-olive like the river
 bed; the under, shimmering and bright,
 the newly sun-hit surface of the water.
 I am Seurat—my dots are scales, the play
 of light on something moving, sinuous;
 the dark is stippled black; two jet eyes say
 "I see"; a single brushstroke is a grimace.
  
 That's how to animate a wooden fish.
 But how to paint the valved thing of your heart
 to show the flutter of its damson flesh?
 Or how articulate the mermaid swish—
 the muscle gripping, slippery and salt—
 of that deep place whose quickening amazed?
  
  
 * One of the occupations given in response to the 1881 census,
 as preserved by the London Genealogical Society.

 THE BURNING OF THE CLOCKS
  
 Near dusk, the shortest day, midwinter sun
 about to set and we are, everyone -
  
 the lantern-bearers by the library
 jostling down Ship Street past the gallery,
  
 the drinkers, a street-sleeper, the young girls late
 for skating - moving further from the light.
  
 A man’s about to spill his Brighton Blonde,
 girls moan - the bus has gone the long way round;
  
 then it’s as if the solstice rings a bell
 and winter creases - everything is still.
  
 We stop, like skaters frozen in a death
 spiral - suspended now like sun and earth.
  
 The girls’ protesting spit is caught mid-air,
 beer hangs, the homeless man of course still there.
  
 The corpuscles of light sprinkling the Laine
 are dots of braille that spell out winter’s name.
  
 But freezing is a momentary pause -
 one tick, the sun is heading back to us.
  
 The skaters spiral in, a woman stoops
 to give the man hot food; now the beer slops.
  
 We throw our lanterns on the ship ablaze
 and celebrate the lengthening of days. 

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