Jennifer Maiden

Eleanor Roosevelt woke up in Paris. Hillary

Clinton wore an autumn jacket, bright

beads, and addressed the Press about

the new Libyan No Fly Zone. Hillary’s

campaign faux pearls – as big and

innocent as Jackie Kennedy’s – were gone:

replaced by those semi-precious beads

in elegant earth colours, just

as Eleanor would have worn

herself. Hillary, however, did not

mention that this day in Bahrain

fifty demonstrators were shot, the Saudi

Army had moved in to savagely protect

the Government, with the glowing

Pearl Roundabout monument destroyed

because the protestors had employed

it as a gathering symbol. Eleanor

remembered the thirty-year-old statue

as being indeed quite as lovely

as a star turn at the jewellers,

the giant luna pearl enclasped

high up in petal-claws. Maybe

because she was old, she thought,

she increasingly loved the pretty.

            Hillary was actually

even prettier each day, but

the best she could attempt on Bahrain

was to recommend social order, the sacred

schoolday, workday. Eleanor had been

to school in France two centuries ago, the

headmistress a very nice American

Lesbian whose name she forgot, but

she did recall reading the Medieval

poem ‘Pearl’ on the pearl maiden lost

by her father as a child, reappearing as

an angelic young woman reproaching him

for not being a ‘gentle jeweller’, since

he mourned her inconsolably. We also,

Eleanor reflected, continue to grow

after death. Hillary at one point scratched

her head and visibly thought this would not

look so good and stopped. She often

scratched it absently, luxuriantly, as

women do, when she discussed her plans

with Eleanor. She could do anything in front

of her, she smiled with sugar, pretended it

was to the Press (some of whom suddenly

looked puzzled at her delicious fondness),

told all who were staying to enjoy

their night in Paris teasingly, then left.

Her cute march out of the room, smile

were as self-consciously naughty as a moppet

in the movies, so relaxed

because Eleanor was there. As soon

as they were in the hotel room, she knew

as useful as the Seine, she’d hear

‘But, now, about Bahrain, my dear …’

and thankfully it would not let her be.

   In the International Pavilion,

for carven cats there are three positions

mainly: the sleeping round, the sphinx

and the sitting upright Bast,

protector of women. These cats

are painted in African sunset

colours, from bird pink to black,

with russets, grapes, and tangerines.

They look edgy, like the live

exhibits. The Show is always

edgy, its moon often a high

cold full Easter moon. Some of the

animals will die and be tasted

and fear it. Some schoolchildren

who bred them will vomit with pride.

      Katharine and I avoid

the live exhibits these days, even

the pretty petting zoo. We buy a small pride

of soapstone for her cat collection, two

hippos for my soapstone hippos,

too. These hippos are different:

curled asleep like cats, not upright

on four legs with flaring noses.

When Katharine was a baby, I wrote

a poem that cats have small dry

noses and dogs large wet ones. Mysteriously,

it was requested for an erotic

international anthology and I agreed

diplomatically. Katharine still

finds that hilarious, but I suppose

the anthologists could have been northern

from some area of ice where noses

chill easily and need a pridelike welcome.

I try to photograph her with the new

digital camera but it has too

funhouse a dimension, distorts

the nose too far before the face, which

should suit the Show, but I abandon

it for the mobile phone, which shows

that moon of equinox behind her better, and

her small fine straight nose with its

slight nostril flare in proportion.

We buy a round white cloth cat:

mouthless, Japanese and strong,

the lack of mouth suggesting not

docility but a placid and wide

powerful telepathy. It has

a nose, which looks sensitive and neat.

Such cats were strewn around

the Japanese tidal wave wreckage, wet

and no doubt radioactive. Urbane men

with grim in their name and tone spoke

on Western TV saying that

the Japanese crisis would prove

the safety of nuclear power. Stray

toy cats without mouths did not

lower their pride to reply. The grim moon

of April is a pale pear blossom, not

pink like cherry, peach, or plum. Somewhere

here a cow lows, uncertain. We

hope it is a dairy cow, move on

in the milk-warm moon of caution.

My heart has an Embassy

for Ecuador where I will seek

asylum. Earthquakes

and aftershocks undermine

my hope and my means to work

and the Americans

have wormed into my psyche

with their black knack at fear.

My heart has an Embassy

for Ecuador as rare in air

and sumptuous as the Andes,

as clear as the Equator. There

will be in it waterfalls

and jungles like salvation.

There will be friends

whom I owe nothing, no

famed bail, no knotty

knowing sexualities. My heart

has an Embassy for Ecuador

where there will be no secrets

and the truth falls down like water

from giant granites of despair.