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ESTHER MORGAN
GRACE

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize
Poetry Book Society Recommendation

What happens if, when the angel arrives with his message, no one’s at home? In poems of lyric concentration, Grace examines our need for purpose, for the signs that might help us decide what to do with our lives. It’s a desire that makes for restless spirits – like the woman who keeps shifting her furniture around or the invisible subjects of an early photograph, moving too fast to be captured.

Other poems ask what happens when we reconcile ourselves to watching and waiting – whether the angle of the sun in a guest room or the colour of a bruised clementine is really ‘enough to be going on with’. Haunted by a blue sky out of which something (or nothing) might come, these are poems of intensely felt moments. They create a vision both troubled and informed by doubt, where the ghost of a film star may be the closest we can come to grace.

‘Poems of outstanding beauty and a decidedly celebratory wisdom that takes nothing for granted. This is poetry of the first order by a poet who really knows how to sing’ – JOHN BURNSIDE

‘Esther Morgan’s poems are full of hints and mysteries. They dance on sensuous feet while keeping a troubled eye on the music that keeps them dancing. But there are joys here as well as anxieties, and it is the two that amplify each other into such clear, poignant and resonant shapes’ – GEORGE SZIRTES

‘Esther Morgan’s poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise’ – ANTONY DUNN, Poetry London

Cover painting: The Chair (2005) by John Vesty

ESTHER MORGAN

GRACE

Dedication

For Livia Elsie

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications where some of these poems first appeared: The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt Publishing, 2011), Did I Tell You? 131 Poems for Children in Need (Word Aid, 2010), Images of Women (Arrowhead Press, 2006), Ink, Sweat and Tears, In the Mix (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Magma, Poetry Review, Seam, Smiths Knoll and Spring (Gatehouse Press, 2009).

‘This Morning’ won the 2010 Bridport Prize, ‘Garbo Among Us’ won third prize in the 2010 Mslexia poetry competition while ‘Short-hold’ was shortlisted in the same competition. ‘The Dew Artist’ was shortlisted for the Larkin and East Riding Poetry Prize 2011.

In addition I’d like to thank the following whose advice and encouragement has been invaluable in helping to shape this collection: Martin Figura and Helen Ivory for organising our regular poetry get-togethers and the members of the group – Joanna Guthrie, Andrea Holland, Matthew Howard, Andrew McDonnell and Tom Warner; Polly Clark and all the great women poets on the Cove Park retreat, September 2010; Jo Emeney, Brian Johnstone, Esther Menon, Helen Oswald, Fiona Robyn, Sibyl Ruth, and Heidi Williamson. Thank you to my friends and family for their continuing support, and to my husband, Kelvyn, for the past and the future.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Grace

Among Women

This Year, Next Year, Sometime, Never

Epiphany

Waiting Places

The Nature of Things

Blessed Art Thou

I want to go back to The Angel

News

Enola Gay

Shifting

Five Easy Pieces

The China-mender’s Daughter

Muntjac

To My Godmother

The Edge of Something

The Long Holidays

As I Walked Out

Who She Is

Long Exposure

The Glass House

What Happens While We Are Sleeping

Summer Storm

Moonflower

Hide Nor Hair

Harvest

Garbo Among Us

The Promise of Snow

Things Left Out All Night

Homing

Short-hold

Wayfarer

Still Life with Purple Sage

At the Falls Café

After Life

Spare Room in Summer

Detail

This Morning

Last Summer

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

Guest Room

Morandi: Still Lives

The Dew Artist

The Messengers

Mrs Meakin Opens Her Window to the Larks

Early One Morning

To Manor Farm Only

Verses

The Gardener

Ridgeway

Risen

NOTES

About the Author

Copyright

Grace

You’ve been living for this for weeks

without knowing it:

the moment the house empties like a city in August

so completely

it forgets you exist.

Light withdraws slowly

is almost gone before you notice.

In the stillness, everything becomes itself:

the circle of white plates on the kitchen table

the serious chairs that attend them

even the roses on the papered walls

seem to open a little wider.

It looks simple: the glass vase holding

whatever is offered –

cut flowers, or the thought of them –

simple, though not easy

this waiting without hunger in the near dark

for what you may be about to receive.

*  *  *

Among Women

One evening I came back home

and everything was just as I’d left it –

except the bowls gleamed with a new knowledge,

the cat wore his yellow gaze like a mask,

and I sensed the house had been visited –

wings unfurling like ferns in the quiet air.

I was blessed with children anyway,

I shook my life out like a cloth,

and perhaps there is a purpose after all

in not being chosen:

the minute my clock has never regained,

sunlight in the guest room climbing its ladder of dust.

This Year, Next Year, Sometime, Never

Stepping in from the brightness,

the room was shady and cool as a larder,

the table clothed like an altar

and laid as if for a different life.

Finding the tongue still lithe

and moving in my head,

I sat and ate my fill –

the day old bread thinly sliced and buttered

the late-summer plums in their staining juice

answering a hunger I’d never known until then.

I hardly need to tell you this –

the sharpness following the sweetness,

the bruise-coloured flesh,

then the clock of stones.

But for a moment

I felt my work here was completed –

galaxies of light blazing

in the mirror’s bevelled edge,

the children in their grubby white shirts

gravitating slowly towards home.

Epiphany

I’ve been doing this ever since I was a girl –

stepping into a moment

like an empty platform

or a summer garden

just before the dew has lifted –

as if I could dare you to appear.

They say not being given

what we pray for

is also an answer: the blue sky at dawn

with its wafer of moon,

the embankment buddleia

burning with admirals.

Waiting Places

They seem so nondescript – these quiet shelters

and sidings where we idle like children

for lifts, for buses and trains, for something

to carry us away;

these cracks in our lives

where Traveller’s Joy takes root,

turning into Old Man’s Beard as we wonder

what to do with our evenings.

Week after week the grey rag flaps

invisibly, snagged in the bare branches,

the girl last seen in jeans, a red T-shirt’s

still missing.

What if one hazy afternoon,

Greensleeves drifting from across the park,

this Rorschach of spilt paint on the pavement,

opened its wings?

The Nature of Things

An ordinary hour –

hot in the shade

the sour smell of privet

from overgrown front gardens,

the children drowsy as flies

in the long glass classrooms.

The traffic clears and in the gap

the thought occurs

like birdsong –

At this moment

no one is thinking of me

or even knows I’m here –

not your husband

tapping gently at his keys,

not your daughter

laying out clothes for the evening,

not a single friend or relation,

distant or close.

A word now from a stranger

and you’d follow without question,

your bag of bread and milk

left unattended in the sun.

The green man shines,

no one crosses

and what arrives instead

through a haze of pollen and light

is a voice telling you again

never to go up

or down the stairs

without carrying something,

that it’s the nature of things

to be always

in the wrong place.

Blessed Art Thou

First I watched you kneading the dough,

how you put your whole body into it,

the surprising strength of your slim fingers.

Next you swept each room of the house

as if it were spring,

as if you were expecting a guest.

I couldn’t tell from this if you were blessed,

except by my presence, the words I had been charged with

beginning to burn.

Sensing this, perhaps, you kept yourself busy

until there was nothing more to be done:

the vase of lilies set in the centre of the table.

Believe me, if I could have left you then,

as you stepped back to admire

the flowers’ golden tongues…

but you chose that moment, at last, to rest,

your skin filmed and shining,

your warmth rising against me like bread.

I want to go back to The Angel

Why won’t somebody take her?

It’s only a short walk away

across the late summer allotments

where the dill must already be running to seed.

Meanwhile, here are Tunes from the War –

her head grows feathery with voices

in a room bright as a kindergarten.

A meal appears out of nowhere and is frightening.

Then it’s time for undressing again,

though nothing’s been done, nothing that should have been –

the takings not counted and locked in the safe,

the tables still sticky with rings.

Tomorrow they croon

like the daughter who’ll always come later

Tomorrow promises the wind across the river

Tomorrow sing the creaking wings.

News

After all this time I’m still trying

to appear to you –

it’s harder than you think,

requires a furious concentration:

like the apple you lift to your lips without looking

I’ve taken infinite pains to be here.

Once there was something I had to tell you –

the city we might flee to, or the name of a child,

words that could hinge our lives

like a breastbone its wings.

Even now when you ask

and I say Nothing

what I mean is white flesh, a shining skin:

that we must leave all we own this instant

as if the foretold enemy were coming –

our back door flung open hard against the brick,

the radio in the deserted kitchen

still blaring the news.

Enola Gay

She could be anybody’s mother

pegging out the washing on a hot August morning,

lifting a sheet’s saintly dazzle to the line.

The day stretches in front of her stainlessly:

her hands keep her busy, fluttering through each room

until all the windows are blinding.

She irons away the long afternoon,

pressing summer dresses thin as her own skin,

her face blurred by the clouds of steam.

Evening and his bedtime comes around again –

she used to kiss him, then tell him

to Blow out the light!

She crosses herself before falling asleep –

all night she flies for mile after starless mile

over fields of white linen.

Shifting

Once a week she feels the urge like a headache

to shift all the furniture around,

filling the house with a sound like thunder –

the red sofa lugged under the window,

the TV next to the fireplace,

the rug lengthways against the opposite wall.

It’s like a Christmas cracker puzzle without a solution –

the rug this time dragged into the middle, not touching,

the TV angled towards the window,

the sofa against the wall with the radiator

that still (mental note) needs bleeding.

But there’s always something that doesn’t ft

something left over –

the bookcase with its shelves of green murder,

a spider plant consigned to a corner without enough light.

What doesn’t change is the room, or the furniture,

only the permutations she has to work with

which may include, one of these fine days,

the TV, the bookcase, the spider plant,

the rug rolled up with its map of stains

all piled high on the badly clawed sofa,

itself shoved hard against the front door

on the other side of which a daughter,

home early from school, is pushing, pushing.

Five Easy Pieces

Of course we’re on the side of the girl,

the poor, pretty, pig-ignorant and pregnant blonde

as she idles by the side of the car

waiting for Jack to pay for the gas

and get them on their way.

There she stands in her too-tight coat,

yawning and dishevelled

in the no man’s land of the forecourt,

blowsy as the woman she’ll become,

her back aching with eight weeks to go.

Mercifully bored, she’s thinking only

that he’s taking his time,

of what she might cook tonight for supper,

blind as a kitten to what’s already happening to her –

which is unforgivable, and for the rest of her life.

That’s where the movie always leaves her,

just before the future kicks in,

our pulses quickening as we watch him watching

as she shrinks to nothing in the truck’s rear view

while the driver asks where he’s from, where he’s going.

The China-mender’s Daughter

I want to tell her –

The people in my life are like plates,

I have to keep them happy, keep them spinning,

to ask her Have you ever found

the hard-fired words for pain or love

and set them ringing?

Smiling delicately, she’s explaining

how he’d check for veins of damage

lifting each piece of fine-bone to the light,

how it flared, translucent,

in his fingers – a hare’s ear

shot through with sun.

Muntjac

At the time it felt like a rescue –

her weight in your arms like a hero,

the lack of struggle or blood.

But now in the darkness behind your head

she is breathing quietly, and the sleep she needs

is not in your gift, no matter how gently

you take each corner like a newborn father

coming home from the ward.

Why didn’t you just leave her

among the lost shoes and windshield glass,

concede, there and then, the hopelessness?

The oncoming cars dazzle and pass.

How heavy it is – this brokenness

which couldn’t be helped.

To My Godmother

I thought I understood something

of the pain it caused you,

signing my name each birthday

with love

as if I could remind you

more than anything else.

I thought it was just your daughter

you missed, not seeing

that meant everything

she was missing from,

that thirty summers later

it means everything still.

Forgive me –

I did not know then

how grief works,

how it steeps the clear world

like dye from a red dress

that keeps on running.

The Edge of Something

As a child she’d lived at the edge of something –

a house backing on to open fields

rolling away under a tide of barley

towards a beech-wood where a girl could play

all summer long, out of sight and mind.

Once she’d got as far as a candle’s light,

had almost reached the make-believe trees

where she’d buried her survival kit weeks before

among the roots: a penknife, half a packet

of soft digestives, the doll she’d chosen to save.

Sometimes, slipping out of bed early

while the rest of the house is curled in sleep,

she stands so still at the kitchen window

a stranger out walking in the dawning fields

might take her for a vase of wildflowers.

The Long Holidays

The day stretches ahead – nothing but

grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky

as far as the eye can see

nothing but

sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass

and the wind galloping hard over the fields

like a riderless horse.

As I Walked Out

Don’t tell me you’ve never dreamed of this –

of waking in a room with a wide open window,

the air clear and ringing after night rain;

of needing no other reason than a sky

the unbelievable blue of which

sends you flitting deftly through the house

past the year-old jar of nails and flies,

the pile of dishes in the sink, and out the back door

where you’re caught for an instant in the brightness

because the future’s so much easier than you’d thought –

slipping your heart under the rosebush like a key,

everything you need in the canvas bag

resting lightly at your hip

and life as simple as turning left or right.

Who She Is

If you want to know who she really is

sit beside her quietly on the morning bus,

observe the way her green glass earrings

pick out the flowers in her summer dress,

then watch closely as she puts down her pen

to stare across a field of silvery brassicas.

Now imagine devouring, leaf by leaf,

each sweet and tightly folded heart.

Long Exposure

The goods have survived – the displays

of ribbons and perishables,

windows of iced patisserie,

a greengrocer’s pyramid of apples.

So too, more hazily,

have those with nowhere to go –

the shoe-shine boy materialised

at the foot of his dark-suited client

or the woman sitting alone in a pavement café

with time on her hands.

Though in the light of this past

where a smile is out of the question

and the slightest gesture

makes a ghost of skin

more faithful still

is the appearance of emptiness:

a mid-morning street quiet with sun

like the moment after truth or disaster,

an absence which is really desire –

to be somewhere else

whether better or worse hardly matter

just as long as we’re moving…

The Glass House

It’s what you’ve always dreamed of:

room after room tidal

with light

like a mind

that keeps on emptying itself –

by day a blue you could almost

reach out and touch,

by night – curled soft as fruit –

nothing between you

and the stars.

It’s where you’ve always lived:

walking down the rain-glazed street

or past the budding park –

this window which –

like a child or bird –

you beat your heart against:

thin and clear

and everywhere you look.

*  *  *

What Happens While We Are Sleeping

Frost. Foxes. Owl-kills.

The wheel of stars.

Thundering lorries with somewhere

to get to by dawn.

Beads of dew forming

along the telegraph wires.

A red deer delicately eating

each closed tulip like a prayer.

Summer Storm

We wake to carpets darkened and drenched,

curtains wringing like the skirts of a heroine.

The lives we assumed would be continued

lie strewn across the garden

still shocked

by the great, blank sheets of light:

sodden tartan rugs, the scattered cushions of absent children,

bowls swimming with dashed blossom,

wine glasses filled to the brim,

a novel lying face down, swollen with rain.

I stand barefoot on the soaking grass

like the woman who walked away without a scratch.

In the sun the shirts and summer dresses hang glittering

like the clothes of the baptised.

Moonflower

Today she wakes heavy as a stone

without knowing why

her skin chilled

as the milk on her doorstep.

She moves through the morning’s

dark circles

like the old – slowly –

with a sense of something forgotten.

By noon, broody for sleep, she succumbs

climbing back into bed

sheets wide as a field.

The pollen freckling her arms

the grass-seed threading the hem

of her nightdress

are easily missed.

She sinks deep without dreaming

(only last night

a moth mistook her throat

for a flower)

Hide Nor Hair

By lunchtime the fields and private woods should be echoing,

the doors of barns and outbuildings dragged open,

their rusted machinery exposed to the sun.

By dusk it should be serious as the river.

It takes until nightfall to become a dream –

the creak of dark stairs, the back door sticking

for the last time, that ring of mushrooms on the green

blooming in the moonlight like a soul.

Harvest

For once when you ask

I follow without question,

brushing past the sour nettles

that choke the gap in the hawthorn hedge

to stand at the edge of this moment

you have led us to:

full and clear

it rises like music over the wheat.

Far off a back-yard dog

starts barking at the stars

and is answered in kind –

We are this far apart but not alone.

Across the bone dry fields

a farmhouse window is shining like home

as a light will always shine

when seen from a great enough distance.

Garbo Among Us

She could be this woman you hold a glass door

open for, not because she’s beautiful but old;

or perhaps you brushed shoulders with her fur

as you hurried along the crowded winter street;

or that pale-faced girl you stopped to ask for directions,

didn’t she speak as if her words were a commandment

to leave this world entirely –

carry on to the end, then keep on walking?

Wherever you go it may be that you’re touched

without knowing it, strangely and lightly

as a flurry of snow in the night

touches the stone kings and rough sleepers.

The Promise of Snow

Why risk setting out at this late hour,

leaving the glow of the city behind,

the good roads dwindling to little more than a track

on its tortuous climb through the mountains?

Why heed that old tug of the blood,

the skin’s first inkling as the mercury dips

that tonight the white horse is flying,

covering the ground between here and the past

if it weren’t on the off-chance

that you were already braving the dark

to meet me again at that gap in the sky

where we stood, open-mouthed, to catch the first wafers?

Things Left Out All Night

acquire a gravitas –

the spade presiding over rows of lettuces

grown solemn as a cross

the white sheet worn thin by dreams

still glimmering with stars…

as if something had come to pass –

a trowel, half-sunk in earth,

patient as rust

the wheelbarrow stood in long grass

absolved by rain.

*  *  *

Homing

You could hold it in your hand –

this all encompassing desire

housed in a few ounces of feather and bone,

the distance between release –

nights of mountainous cold and hunger –

and a known darkness

where something close to love might stand

shaking the pan of grain

and calling softly.

Short-hold

This is the gap before territory,

before the first fight, the first sex.

The black cat knows it, twitching his tail

on the wrong lawn.

This is the time when our luck might stray –

the syllable flit swoops through the trees,

leaves behind reminder

after red reminder.

Even this lamplight’s provisional,

tomorrow may shine from a different window;

our lives are still fragile

wrapped in old headlines and stars.

How empty the white bookshelves are,

how easily tipped…

weightless the walls of clocks, pictures, mirrors…

I stand at the open door, calling…

Meanwhile you’ve lit the difficult boiler.

All night its steady breathing fills the kitchen

like the sleep of a new-born

we haven’t yet named.

Wayfarer

People always think they belong somewhere,

some patch of earth claims them more than any other,

but his feet have always told him otherwise,

settling for a few days here or there by chance –

a kind word at the right moment,

a dry barn with no lock on the door,

a farmer with a blind eye.

But for weeks now he’s been showing up

every day to tend this garden –

weeding, dead-heading, mowing the grass –

small tasks that somehow

keep coming around.

A neighbour’s lent a caravan and a yard,

someone else donates a telly

and suddenly he’s been here long enough

to see the runner’s scarlet flowers

turn into beans, to eat them,

steaming, from a bowl with butter.

Part of the furniture! they pull his leg

pouring him another glass of red

that tastes of the ground it came from.

It still feels strange for him to say goodnight,

and walk back up the lane

to where?

‘Home’ is the wrong word

but what else to call it –

this blue glow from his window

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