Shearsman 62: Janet Sutherland: 4 Poems

Shearsman 62

Janet Sutherland

Four Poems

Cinnabar

He gave me cinnabar, in a small suitcase,
just before my ship sailed out of port.
In the first days when I dare not walk
on deck I would look at the red stain
on the soiled leather and remember his
hands. Each morning I checked the old
barometer for weather, heel schoon
it said and the sea was flat, silvered.
Progress was slow. Sailors called to me.
The captain looked away and would not speak.

Later, a swelling sea, veranderlyk, and a coastline
near enough to hear the breakers crashing
against rock. Birds on the cliff tops rising
and wheeling, falling as one, gone to nothing.
Sunsets were vermilion, madder lake.
The water, lapis lazuli and azurite. I could
not sleep. The stars reminded me of home.
A dress hung in my cabin waiting for landfall.
Lamplight drew a face upon its folds.
In the creaking of the timbers I heard voices.

One bone black night, I walked on deck,
a lead white moon dipped in and out. The sea
became the folded downs, a lighthouse flashing
endlessly. Near dawn there came a glimmer
on the waves, a glaze like mercury on glass.
Bestendig, then, I took my suitcase out
and opened it, a fine red dust rose up
to darken on the surface of the sea..
Though I am emptied too, my alchemist
spent all the hidden gold he left in me

[Heel Schoon – perfect weather; Veranderlyk – changeable, or variable; Bestendig – settled]

Blackbirds flying

white threadbare linen, hooks removed,
steeped, pounded, placed in vats
and raised in mesh to drain
then dry,
compressed

a winter sub-song heard from undergrowth

as iron gall, dark like a black bird's eye
flowed from the sharpened quill, gum
Arabic prevented feathering

the warning call with flicking wings and tail

sometimes the sonnet put itself aside
for lists of births and deaths and marriages,
the cost of fish and ale and wheat for baking bread

a loud and pleasing warbling flutelike song

a cadence rising delicate might be
a broken arc of shell in greenish blue
another place to move to outside this

on the edges of dense woodland, a song post
as permanent as paper scratched with ink

(untitled)

an image of skin I once knew intimately
like water stalled below a bank of autumn trees

mirrored; unreachable as trout,
slipping under an eel trap for shelter

in the dust under the willows
the heifers stand idly

dung laden tails swish
to their round swollen bellies,

some of them swam to the bull
on the other side, risking the current

and had to be fetched home, long miles
in a lorry, carrying chaos

and I count them, their little bastards
growing unplanned, not by the book

like water stalled below a bank of autumn trees
mirrored, unreachable as trout

An Orchard Subject 1946

This war time gardener
lauds his sweet cherries:
red turk, ursula rivers, smoky dunn
governor wood, hooker's black and elton heart

precisely accurate and dry his text explains
the cuts and mazzard stocks, the tips and tricks
for heavy crops. He mourns the fruits
devoured by birds at cherry picking time

his sour cherries do not suffer such attacks,
a passable dessert, he will allow,
when fully ripe. Self fertile, un-acclaimed,
anonymous and humble, fruit for pies

he sends his female pickers out in pairs
to cut these modest crops. Their constant chat,
an irritant to him and to the birds,
is sweetened, useful, scattered under trees

unheard, these women mutter constantly,
between the careful lines in counterpoint,
and spit, like restless saboteurs,
delicious, dangerous and tender juice.

Janet Sutherland lives in Lewes, Sussex. She has featured regularly in recent issues of the magazine. Shearsman Books will publish her first full-length collection in 2006. The Dutch words in the first poem above are weather indicators from a barometer.