Sport 3: Spring 1989
Ken Edlin — To the Roughhouse
Ken Edlin
To the Roughhouse
i
(Scan, -5 months)
Who taught me to clap hands?
I couldn't do it in the womb, I know
since I saw my baby
flail
and miss
swimming through a fuzzed sea in a cupboard
This time the screen showed it all — feet
hands, virtually a face looking out of the grey
waves. And a heartbeat
a perfect mechanism, pumping like a limpet
against the glass
no thought of stopping
ii
(Still talking)
I can't leave you alone, and you can't
leave me.
It's no wonder we get no work done—
we notice silence and track each other down
What are you reading?
what are you doing?
Remember...
page 42
Six years of remembers, talking
touching conversing even
in our sleep
this long discussion
left off
regathered
the sound of your voice
from another room,
across a corner
of table
Sitting here suddenly I think
it's a special occasion,
a holiday
Let's forget what we're meant
to be doing
have a cup of tea, debate
the death penalty
all over again
iii
In the blank room of blood
the world comes muffled
through pipes
distant clangings of actions
and voices.
Everyone wonders
who's in the room,
who kicks back language
through the walls?
Whoever it is has their suspicions
they're not alone
the flying saucers of our fingers
bend her sky in, our voices call her small planet
through impenetrable cloud
page 43
Hello baby
anyone home?
Sweet taste of blood, in heavy
syrup. listen with all your new
fish bones
to the thunder...
It's almost as if 1 was trying
to tell you something.
iv
Stephen's mother got put in Porirua
for following a woman home
to her house
and refusing to leave, refusing
to believe
that the light warm kitchen
wasn't hers, the cat and the children
weren't hers, that the woman
standing dialling
dealing with it all
was entirely
another person...
v
What did you want
to re-paper the kitchen for
anyway?
here you are as big as a house
in tears because you've made a mess
of the stripping, dirty, tired
and angry
page 44
nothing done, the bed not made
hard yellow shavings of paper
everywhere. And you're heavy
and you're clumsy
and you haven't got enough money
and I don't care about the kitchen
And this baby bobbing about
in all the frustration
has just stripped away one more
week
making only 5 to go. In the middle of the night
those soft nails
move in a kind
of impatience
And
we do our best
to do our best
but she's coming
whether the kitchen's ready
or not
vi
(grandparents)
During the early part of their marriage
he would still jump on his bicycle
and chase a fire-engine. When he was
at work she was often
lonely all day, and it seemed strange
she had to leave her mother
for an empty house.
The first baby she had
she held
and cried. How would she ever
be enough?
page 45
And the bicycle was sold for a car
and the world changed
amongst other things
fires becoming far more formal,
invitation only.
vii
We gardened in the dark for you
pushed your seed well down
swelling
until our feet walked your season
around
The moon screeched up like an ambulance,
in its wet light
we grasped your hair and pulled
You came
new potato of a baby
slick with all our
old oils...
viii
You cut your lungs on light, squeezed
out of her heart's racket
your whole
collapsed universe
People crowd into your life, huge
eager to struggle with you, teach you
a lesson
you'll never forget...
Welcome to the roughhouse, I've seen you
once before — minus five months
flipping perfect
through your world
You didn't know you weren't born.
ix
(Tamata peak)
I was afraid my brother would just
step off
because he was a teenager. Or that
he would grab me and wrestle
close to the edge.
The mountain
was only half there, the old head split
and fallen, a string
of cars like drops of blood
across the hairline.
The wideness appalled me,
the whole
draughty butter-coloured world
crammed into view
How could you not fall
when there was so much
to fall off?
x
(She's staying on)
There's three of us living here
now
Already when she cries the cat
doesn't bother to raise his
head — perhaps
like me he imagines she's going home
at the end of the week...
page 47
But it's too late: there's the size of her luggage
for a start
the stuffed dogs and bears
spindly baby furniture
odd bootees between the cushions
buckets of cold water
and drawers of clothes labelled too large
and too small
It's too late: there's no point getting used to her
she's going to want change
to do one thing different every day
to leave nothing
of this
shitting french mustard,
waving beautiful fists
xi
When the house was pulled down
after eighty years
gorse sprang up on the bare
rectangle of earth
split straight out of seeds
blocked by floors, seeds ticking slower
than footsteps
holding faster than three families'
draughty lives
stepping
across the sun
xii
(The four steps)
1 I look at her
2 more closely
3 place a hand
across her body
tunnelled under blankets
4 with the tip of a finger
stroke her ear
lightly, once
She sighs.
She's still alive.
xiii
From sleep suddenly she stutters
into life
an engine of grief
Our baby who never cries
cries and cries and cries
face bent and pulled
into misery
legs beating invisible scalding water
nails trying to tear strips
off pain
page 49
Lifting her, her shrieks
swarm with questions
I feel her breath
go hot
into my shoulder
xiv
(Our house is an old house)
We went to plant a tree
and found a green china woman under the ground
discomposed into pieces.
You gave her a wash in a saucer
and I found the way her skirt
fitted together. No head, or arms
but a foot with very straight
white toes
Put to dry on the new kitchen-sill
in the same slant of afternoon
sun.
xv
IT ONLY HAPPENS
when her mother baths
Katherine laughs
xvi
(for Katherine)
Summer baby at the end of the land's lease
rolling in crushed wax comb
Summer baby in the ploughed crisp furrow
the fingerprint of a farm, you're a tiny
moving piece of shade
Summer baby adrift with the insects
a lizard warming itself on your heart
you find things to play with
all ticking
straw, corn, sunlight greasing chrome
kissing bumpers to surf
black sand brilliant days and islands
green in the sea
Summer baby you swim wherever you are
slow rivers and lounge tables
moving whatever limb
comes before your eyes, determined
to row this season
behind you
xvii
A man lifts his baby to his shoulders
and walks off down the beach, swaying hugely
like a Christmas tree
with a fat angel
The baby pisses down the broad back
as if it's only his right
to ride his father along the sand, waves
tapping at the distant ankles, blond mane
gripped in both fists