Cardamoms

Hussim and Lhani as I recall

their names - I don't know if that's right

and there's no one now to ask -

who stayed with us for three months,

who turned that room into a souk,

who sang softly behind their closed door,

who shyly took my shy mother to the shop

to choose and model dresses for their wives,

who threw us up in the air and caught us,

who kissed us with stinking moustaches,

who cooked on a small stove in that room,

first time we'd ever seen men cook

and who from time to time would conjure up

light white sticky cardamom cakes

the like of which we'd never tasted before.

I've only to bite on a cardamom to see them

zigzag across our lawn in an old car

picked up for a song that neither could drive,

to see them hit a gatepost as they leave

and lurch off down the road into history.

I've only to bite through the soft coat,

find the hard green seed on my tongue,

chew the tough fibre down to a bitter

woody tangle I can neither swallow

nor spit out - that's all I have to remember.

River at Night

Its vegetable breath,

its mucky olive, soaked khaki coat.

Its transparent hands

reaching out to finger the fields.

Slowly the land

is folded away, the light of day

stitched into river.

Where ash and alder end

out it stretches,

all there is, a dull gleaming,

neglected metal.

Little winds flaming and lazing.

On a dead branch

an owl, a wicker of twigs

the slightest touch

could scatter. A shadow peels

off a shadow,

a night heron perhaps, perhaps

something else,

it's too late to translate - all

you can do now

is listen, to this train shunting

its slow coaches by;

this snuffling creature trickling

spittle, this ghost

soak speaking its reek, slurring

wetly its words.

The Forge

It seemed the world had forgotten the forge.

The smith, heaped on a broken chair

in shadow, we didn't notice until he spoke.

The great bellows he showed us lovingly,

the many different nails, the shoes, tongs, 

   hammers

were buried under inches of dust,

sunken shipfittings on an ocean floor.

He moved like a man underwater,

his breathing equipment disconnected.

He touched his face and the spot stayed white.

It seemed the world had forgotten the forge

but in through the door flew a swallow -

a hot coal which from the darkness melted

the fresh metal, the sharp chink of her young.

Thrush

Into the half-silence, the half-light,

the in-betweeny leavings of winter,

thrush wallops a volley of song -

the stale air is nailed in amazement.

It's a blow-torch, a sandblast.

It's petrol poured into tired linings,

perished rubber, the dust and grease

coating the soul. And ignited.

And what more could you ask for,

who cares if the song's not for you?

You stumble out of sleep into

this sudden flood, raking flack -

this shocking dose of hope she'll repeat

dawn after dawn for days, flouting

the laws of privacy, cleansing

the webby lens. You at the foot

of her tree in your pyjamas, skin

riddled with her life-giving shot.