Christian McEwen
In the Wake of HomeLANDSCAPE WITH CHILD (after Paul Klee) The child is so small you hardly see her. She crouches in the corner with the roses. The scrawny trees bear twigs with eyes like candles. The child is frightened of their ghostly faces. She does not trust those strange transparent h ouses. their roofs like witches’ hats or tall church steeples. She keeps her distance from the amber windows. wrapped like happy packages for Christmas. She craves the small blue house beyond the fir-trees where no ghosts cry in thin insistent voices the little tilted house without a window where she can shut her eyes and dream of roses. *** LOVE POEM: GROWING DOWN I used to be a big girl but now I am so small a single raspberry swallows up my tongue. Oh little cobnut oh little boat with the red sail. Bright as the center of a field-eye daisy loud as an insect stubborn as a thumb busy as a marmoset chirpy as a kettle. Oh little cobnut oh little boat with the red sail. When I was a big girl I used to be so tall I could eavesdrop conversations with the trees. Stinky as a work-shirt head down like a badger reticent as black bread difficult as morning. Oh little cobnut oh little boat with the red sail. When I was a big girl I didn’t mind at all if the river put its cold arm round my waist. Wise as a geranium sullen as a stone honest as galoshes sweet-mouthed as a pear. I used to be a big girl but now I am so small. Oh little cobnut oh little boat with the red sail. *** |
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