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Poems from Blue
Hyacinths
Blue Hyacinths is an
anthology of selected poems from the Diversity
House (Excel for Charity) Poetry Competition
held in 2009. The poems below are the winning
poems from that competition.
EMPTIES
It's not the silence of
3am
I miss,
nor the electric purr of the
float,
nor the thrill of reaching
15 miles per hour on the High
Street,
nor the satin-clad housewives
who bow like geishas
to pick their pints off
freezing doorsteps,
nor the taut gold sovereigns
of bottle tops
reflecting the slow sluice of
sunrise,
nor the babv-sick smell of a
spill
not mopped up.
What I miss
is the chatter of a thousand
empties
returning to the depot:
sleighbells echoing on fresh
fallen snow.
-
-
Julie Mellor
I.E.D.
('Improvised Explosive
Devices, known as IEDs, are the insurgents'
deadliest weapon ...' The Times)
In the dark metallic silence
my clock ticks
Only the beetles and soft
moths stir the dust at my feet
They pause uncertainly,
swivel their lunar eyes
Brush with curious antennae
the black box
Of my secret
In the packed inner spaces my
mind works
Only the wires and tiny
switches hear the hum of my labours
They click neatly, pass
orders
Measure precisely the last
moments
Of my undoing
In the still air my heart
bursts
Only the heat and charred
walls remain of my lodging
Fragments journey, take
routes
Reach blindly the brick and
blood
Of their resting place
In this happening I am
fulfilled
No thought or feeling mars my
perfection
Safe in my purpose I have no
morality
Free from the terrible burden
Of my maker
- -
Charles Evans
Blue Hyacinths
Like bruises,
she remembers thinking
as she fingered the bulbs, their
paper-wafery skins
tinged with the shifting
iridescence
she'd last seen on mussel-shells.
That was six weeks to a day
before the grim diagnosis.
She'd chanced on them - three
firm orbs peeking through
a Woolworth's bag her husband had
stashed at the back
of her utility drawer - a
temporary forgetfulness.
Sensing time was running out, and
as surprise for him
she'd taken them, firming them in
fresh compost,
and recalling his sermoning -
Water, then forget
them.
Best let the roots put out their
filaments
- had placed
the crazed porcelain bowl below
the dark stair-well.
By the time the X-ray came, their
tips had
nippled through, with stems
pushing to fullness
the next few months on the
kitchen window-sill.
He was thrilled. But, the bruises
puddling hungrily
to mulberry down his leg, hadn't
had chance to see,
or smell, or touch the blossoms'
waxy handsomeness.
Now back from the crem under
angling sun
and the mist of sherry glasses -
her family long gone,
Father Dykes sliding benignly
away - she catches
minor-glimpses of herself
finger-tracing their bell-shapes,
their deaths already settling in.
Suddenly shudders at palls of
heady fragrances,
and, repelled by their
Our-Lady-blueness gaping,
that bruising insolence of
living,
confesses she cannot understand
why for the life of her
he so cherished them,
year on year
on year.
- -
Roger Elkin |
