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THE
PAIN OF HELENA NAGEL
note
1
Don’t
expect I shall be the same again.
It’s
not betrayal that hurts, but rubbing
it
in, with unwitting smile he can’t help,
with
those gleaming delight teeth drying out
like
the honeysuckle above our back-yard
fence.
Straying over to our neighbour’s
side.
She shaved her half of it first, and mine
was
nothing after that. She cut
in first!
If
only I’d been first! I
swear to God
it
would’ve been better than this dry dirt
I
root in now. Someday I may
forgive,
when
time’s thumb has squeezed out this boil of a
hate
song. Plagued be the wombs
of women
who
have to seek my honeysuckle man.
note
2
I
take my children to the wood. Damned
love
is
dead. Quickly enough cannot
come the
bare
trees. I’ll feel right
then. I seem to’ve had
my
best time. A no-man’s
mistress, done for.
The
boy and girl squeal, and the savage aisles
of
Stanmore’s oaks and puddles echo a
little.
A little of the old life boils
in
my tragic insides. The old
powers stir.
The
children waken powers. I
think now
that
if some evil rose up, budded with
eyes,
I’d welcome the beast and offer to
drink
blood with him. Sign my
name. Look over
that,
Satanas. Give Dracula good
health.
Scream,
kids! Raise the devil!
Run, kill, scream, pow!
note
3
Today
we crossed two jungles and two wastes
before
stopping on the border of the
unknown.
We tracked the Stinking Ponda to
its
lair. Noted the screams of
the savage
beasts
we couldn’t see. Lost our
way back. Swore
next
week we’d map the animal trails we
used
for paths. Give names to
twisted trees and
berry
boughs. Stay longer.
Discover more.
It
is one way to live, going slightly
mad
and smelling again the toadstool and
fern
of the forest I explored as a
young
girl. I needed a territory
to
lose myself in. The wood
was a friend.
It
soothed. It went on and on
for ever
note
4
My
delicate dear child. I can
hold your
wrists
and flap together your hands like two
little
sticks. And you smile and
let me. Who
gives
me such touch and such trust? I
suffer.
Tonight
we climbed Everest. There
was a
gale
blowing. Can you imagine
how those
sweatered
hunks were coping on the high seas,
or
chewing and spitting in Moon River?
And
this summer we swam in the Solent.
Those
were balmy days, you and me alone.
We
sat at night in our shirts, drank our drinks.
I
hurt, children. Indelicacies
print
deep,
I tell you. But come the
snow or sun,
you
rescue me. Clap your hands
for me. Thanks.
Alan
Marshfield
note
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