Riley - Say Something Back

Denise Riley Say Something Back PICADOR Do not think you have to say Anything back. But you do Say something back which I Hear by the way I speak to you. W. S. Graham, from Implements in their Places For my friends, and for my children:Rose, Laura, and remembering Jacob

And sleek down Your furriness. Slim as a whippy wire Shall be your hope, and ultraflexible. Flap thinly, sheet of beaten tin That wont affectionately plump up More cushioned and receptive lays. But little song, dont so instruct yourself For none are hanging around to hear you. They have gone bustling or stumbling well away. ii What is the first duty of a mother to a child?At least to keep the wretched thing alive Band Of fierce cicadas, stop this shrilling.

My daughter lightly leaves our house. The thought rears up: fix in your mind thisMaybe final glimpse of her. Yes, lightning could. I make this note of dread, I register it. Neither my note nor my critique of it Will save us one iota. I know it. iii Maybe a retouched photograph or memory, This beaming one with his striped snake-belt And eczema scabs, but either way its framed, Glassed in, breathed hard on, and curated. iii Maybe a retouched photograph or memory, This beaming one with his striped snake-belt And eczema scabs, but either way its framed, Glassed in, breathed hard on, and curated.

Its odd how boys live so much in their knees. Then both of us had nothing. You lacked guile And were transparent, easy, which felt natural. iv Each child gets cannibalised by its years. It was a man who died, and in him died The large-eyed boy, then the teen peacock In the unremarked placid self-devouring That makes up being alive. v Its late. v Its late.

And it always will be late. Your small monuments atop its hillock Set with pennants that slap, slap, over the soil. Heres a denatured thing, whose one eye rummages Into the mound, her other eye swivelled straight up: A short while only, then I come, she carols but is only A fat-lot-of-good mother with a pointless alibi: I didnt Know. Yet might there still be some part for me To play upon this lovely earth? Say. Or Say No, earth at my inner ear. vi A wardrobe gapes, a mourner tries Her several styles of howling-guise: Youd rather not, yet you must go Briskly around on beaming show.

A soft black gown with pearl corsage Wont assuage your smashed mnage. It suits you as you are so pale. Still, do not get that saffron veil. Your dead dont want you lying flat. Therell soon be time enough for that. vii Oh my dead son you daft bugger This is one glum mum.

Come home I tell you And end this tasteless melodrama quit Playing dead at all, by now its well beyond A joke, but your humour never got cruel Like this. Give over, you indifferent lad, Take pity on your two bruised sisters. For Didnt we love you. As we do. But by now Were bored with our unproductive love, And infinitely more bored by your staying dead Which can hardly interest you much, either. viii Here I sit poleaxed, stunned by your vanishing As you practise your charm in the underworld Airily flirting with Persephone.

Not so hardTo imagine what her mother had gone through To be ferreting around those dark sweet halls. ix Theyd sworn to stay for ever but they went Or else I went then concentrated hard On the puzzle of what it ever truly meant For someone to be here then, just like that, To not. Training in mild loss was useless Given the final thing. And me lamentably Slow to take it in far better toss it out, How should I take in such a bad idea. No, Ill stick it out instead for presence. x I cant get sold on reincarnating you As those bloody gentle showers of rain Or in fields of ripening grain oooh Anodyne nor yet on shadowing you In the hope of eventually pinpointing You bemused among the flocking soulsClustered like bats, as all thronged gibberingDusk-veiled nor in modern creepiness. x I cant get sold on reincarnating you As those bloody gentle showers of rain Or in fields of ripening grain oooh Anodyne nor yet on shadowing you In the hope of eventually pinpointing You bemused among the flocking soulsClustered like bats, as all thronged gibberingDusk-veiled nor in modern creepiness.

Lighthearted presence, be bodied forth Straightforwardly. Lounge again under The sturdy sun youd loved to bake in. Even ten seconds worth of a sighting Of you would help me get through This better. With a camera running. xi Ardent bee, still you go blundering With downy saddlebags stuffed tight All over the fuchsias drop earrings. Ill cry Oh bee! to you, instead Since my own dead, apostrophised, Keep mute as this clear garnet glaze Youre bumping into.

Blind diligence, Bee, or idiocy this banging on and on Against such shiny crimson unresponse. xii Outgoing soul, I try to catch You calling over the distances Though your voice is echoey, Maybe tuned out by the noise Rolling through me or is it You orchestrating that now, Whod laugh at the thought Of me being sung in by you And being kindly dictated to. Its not like hearing you live was. It is what youre saying in me Of what is left, gaily affirming. xiii Flat on a cliff I inch toward its edge Then scrutinise the chopped-up sea Where gannets ivory helmet skulls Crash down in tiny plumes of white To vivify the languid afternoon Pressed round my fingertips are spikes And papery calyx frills of fading thrift That men call sea pinks so I can take A studied joy in natural separateness. And I shant fabricate some nodding: Shes off again somewhere, a good sign.

By now, she must have got over it. xiv Dun blur of this evenings lurch to Eventual navy night. Yet another Night, day, night, over and over. I so want to join you. xv The flaws in suicide are clear Apart from causing bother To those alive who hold us dear We could miss one another We might be trapped eternally Oblivious to each other One crying Where are you, my child The other calling Mother. xvii Suspended in unsparing light The sloping gull arrests its curl The glassy sea is hardened waves Its waters lean through shining air Yet never crash but hold their arc Hung rigidly in glaucous ropes Muscled and gleaming. xvii Suspended in unsparing light The sloping gull arrests its curl The glassy sea is hardened waves Its waters lean through shining air Yet never crash but hold their arc Hung rigidly in glaucous ropes Muscled and gleaming.

All that Should flow is sealed, is poised In implacable stillness. Joined in Non-time and halted in free fall. xviii Its all a resurrection song. Would it ever be got right The dead could rush home Keen to press their chinos. xix She do the bereaved in different voices For the point of this address is to prod And shepherd you back within range Of my strained ears; extort your reply By finding any device to hack through The thickening shades to you, you now Strangely unresponsive son, who were Such reliably kind and easy company, Wont you be summoned up once more By my prancing and writhing in a dozen Mawkish modes of reedy piping to you Still no? Then let me rest, my dear. xx My sisters and my mother,Weep dark tears for meI drift as lightest ashesUnder a southern seaO let me be, my motherIn no unquiet graveMy bone-dust is faint coral