David Harsent

In darkness. In rain. Yourself at the very point

where what’s yours bleeds off through the palings

to terra incognito, and the night’s blood-hunt

starts up in the brush: the notion of something smiling

as it slinks in now for the rush and sudden shunt.

A women is laying a table; the cloth

billows as it settles; a wine-glass catches the light.

A basket for bread, spoons and bowls for broth

as you know, just as you know how slight

a hold you have on this: a lit window, the faint

odour of iodine in the rainfall’s push and pull.

Now she looks out, but you’re invisible

as you planned, though maybe it’s a failing

to stand at one remove, to watch, to want

everything stalled and held on an indrawn breath.

The house, the woman, the window, the lamplight falling

short of everything except bare earth –

can you see how it seems, can you tell

why you happen to be just here, where the garden path

runs off to black, still watching

as she turns away, sharply, as if in fright,

while the downpour thickens and her shadow on the wall,

trembling, is given over to the night?

Surely it’s that moment from the myth

in which you look back and everything goes to hell.

Not everything dead is buried in that place

of rapid shadows. They’re all in place, some head-

to-tail or arse-up, some cheek-by-jowl or face

to face (whether or not they were married), some in place

of others who say there’s nothing to be said

and turn the earth at night and know their place.

The markers are blank, since everything’s taken as read

in a place like that. Not everything buried is dead.

Now rise from the bath, your hair caught up with a peg.

The water peels back from your breasts like the film from

        a cooking egg.

You cleanly cleave your arse as you lift one leg

to the edge of the tub and start to work the towel

from ankle to thigh, then into the damson bevel

of your crotch, after which you sit, heel to knee,

on a raffia chair, your quim guerning to a scowl

as you slip your foot into the foot

of your stocking. Next, it’s your face coming free

of the summer dress, as you greet

yourself in the mirror. Here’s how it goes after that:

        foundation, powder, eye-

shadow, blusher, mascara,

lipstick pressed to a tissue … that perfectly mute

syllable of love (love, or it could be hate)

that I pick up and pocket to re-read later.

The same summer dress you loosened and dropped with a

        clatter

of tiny buttons on tile as I backed you up to the table,

our first night under this roof, and you The Biddable

Spouse, slipping your foot out of the foot

of your stocking … The same table

you cover with a red checkered cloth, setting the bread,

        the butter,

the plum preserve, and the best we have of china.

Ur-wife. Wife of wives.

I’m close enough for ambush as you pass with your box

        of knives.

Your book is Summer by Edith Wharton. A smell

off the borders of something becoming inedible.

Between sleeping and waking, almost nothing at all.

There’s music in this, there would have to be: a swell

of strings and bells becoming inaudible,

note by note, before you latch on to it. The girl

in the story won’t prosper, that’s easy enough to tell. 

How did night come on like that? The sky is full

of birds, wingbeats in darkness becoming indelible.

Laid-up with all about me

a man could want: a stack of the cross-

hatched notebooks I always use,

a Stabilo pen,

a brand-new thriller that famously stole its plot

from The Spanish Tragedy, vodka,

a pineapple tub

of ice to sap (a little) the bright

fever that loosened my teeth, so I half-expected

to see them drop to the quilt

like sticky Chiclets,

laid-up like that, alone

you might say, but well provided for,

I felt a sleep coming on, so thick

I might have been sleeved in darkness; and next

fell into a dream quicker

than my eyes could close: in fact

I’d already declared for Bel-imperia

and was just getting down

past the damp in the crook of her knee

to those salty, pink petals

of crêpe-de-chine,

when a voice I recognised

had me up and out of there and back to my bed –

a hot, synaptic zip

that almost made me believe I’d woken up

until I saw the tattoo:

a letter to every finger neatly between

the knuckle joints,

as he collared the bottle and turned

a page or two of my notebooks. ‘Just here:

is this lorel or Lorelei? – each syllable sharp

as the detonations in ice

when you pour on vodka – ‘It’s plain

what’s fretting you, but look,

you’ll know it sure enough

when someone you claim to recognise climbs up

out of your bones

and legs it for the door

without so much as a kiss-

my-arse-goodbye (on a darkening day of “rain

moving in from the west”) or even a shred of song.’