Look, Ellen, I’m not one to interfere in your affairs

but you must discontinue this liaison immediately.

Do you understand? Good grief, whatever next.

Now, I’ve baked you a Madeira to take back to college

and I’ll run off a summer dress for you this weekend.

I got the pattern out of Woman’s Weekly on Thursday.

You’ll need a fitting though, I’ve noticed a pudding

bulge appearing. I don’t know where you get it from,

must be your father’s side. Now off you pop while

I do the dishes. I don’t want you under my feet.’

A WORKMAN’S drill reverberates in Ellen’s head

as the smoking train growls out of Plumstead Station

rotating laboriously to Charing’s burning cross,

her mind a morass of spinning images; her mother’s tongue

chiding, lengthening, cracking like a whip into air;

a man pinned up on a crucifix, dying so she could

be saved, crosses, head over heels, plummeting;

African primitives in chorus, cherubic white-starched

children singing hallelujahs to the rhythm of pounding

goatskin drums; ten commandments…Do Unto Others…

…Love Thy Neighbour…all torn pages floating

one by one into the abyss. Her congealed brain leads

her to the chapel at Maria Assumpta where she kneels,

soft knees squashed on hard leather cushions,

elbows on a dark varnished pew, and her eyes flame

in prayer, reflected in the dancing candles before her,

and from their inner light the Lord’s voice answers,

baptismal water fills her head, a clear stream runs through

tinkling Love Conquers All and Ellen feels pure once more,

her resolve is born, escorts her uplifted down the aisle

like a groom and out the wooden doors into orange light.

HOPE RISES with the sun over London’s spring streets:

mews, lanes, groves, courts, hills and avenues

spawn lavender blossoms, bunched into wedding

posies till a stray breeze floats them singly down

to pattern grey stone slabs awhile. Daffodils sneak up

out of winter, thorned bushes bud the new season

and natives shed dark woollen protectors for light

cotton reflectors; drills jaunt across town, flowers

splayed on gathered frocks have buckle-sucked waists.

a freckled décolletage is offset by imitation pearls

and dried and dyed cows are slipped over arched feet.

Ellen wears cashmere love like a canary-yellow cardigan,

carries hankies in her handbag on weekend trips to No 31,

where Peggy’s measured enquiry re the unsuitable beau

is charged with the fear that he has not been expurgated.

Ellen stutters back that he is fine, indeed they are fine,

then her breath truncates in her windpipe while Peggy

frenzies a tornado of words over the table and Ellen,

paralysed in the eye of the storm, exhales fear

through a silent sigh and prays for her mother’s approval.

TWO VEILED alabaster Madonnas reside as mantelpiece

sentinels on resolute marble, averting pupil-less eyes

from the scene being drawn out by Peggy.