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SENBAZURU
MARIAMA IFODE ———————————————
Belfast Lapwing
SENBAZURU
MARIAMA IFODE
Belfast LAPWING
First Published by Lapwing Publications c/o 1, Ballysillan Drive Belfast BT14 8HQ Lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com www.lapwingpoetry.com Copyright Š Mariama Ifode 2012 All rights reserved The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Since before 1632 The Greig sept of the MacGregor Clan Has been printing and binding books
Lapwing Publications are printed at Kestrel Print Unit 1, Spectrum Centre Shankill Road Belfast BT13 3AA 028 90 319211 E:kestrelprint@btconnect.com Hand-bound in Belfast at the Winepress Set in Baskerville Old Face 11pt
ISBN 978-1-907276-99-6
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CONTENTS
SPRING TESTIMONY ST ANDREW’S ST PAUL’S LOVE IN THE FELLS POEM FOR MAMA NATH SEVERE DELAYS THE WIFE WITH NO NAME TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED I WANT THEM TO REMEMBER, MY WASHING BASKET IS FILLED MAGNOLIA THE BEAR THE CULT LAZARUS’S DREAM THE LAKESIDE RETREAT BARROW’S PREDICTION THE KNEELER SENBAZURU PUZZLE COOKIES HISPANIOLA SUNSET BETWEEN WEST HAMPSTEAD OUR LOVE IS LIKE COOKING SOYA BEANS THE CHAMPION IN MEDIA RES THE SILENT COMPANION VETERAN’S DAY SANDCASTLES THE REUNION THE PEARL NECKLACE METHUEN’S MEDICINE THE PAINFUL YEARS SEAFARERS MISTAKES AND MAGPIES SKELETONS AND MARIGOLDS LET GOOD THINGS HAPPEN WHISKY ‘MARY’ MAC
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7 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 38 39 40 41 42 44 45 46 47 48
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SENBAZURU
MARIAMA IFODE
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For
Mary B
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Mariama Ifode
SPRING TESTIMONY In the grey spring, ferocious curls lay strands of tales still to be told a testimony to pressed meetings primmed and trimmed. If my hair could talk it would have a roar for a voice the mane sets the pace of recovery between each curl, a whisper of who I’ve been, how I’ve lived each combing removing tangled suffering a ritual of coping. I turn, and the wind blows the afro remains they exchange glances. The wind says: I blew through you,
yet you did not move my head replies: I am here.
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Senbazuru
ST ANDREW’S The singing lark has made my life so sweet with its rich melody of unsung dreams up castle steps and fishermen’s bays to rest in ceilidh halls. In the mines beneath North, Market and South a man on his knees excavates ores of friendship as the angels guard porticoes of white horses and nets. The singing lark has made my life so sweet with its rich melody of unsung dreams up castle steps and fishermen’s bays to rest in ceilidh halls. The molten iron flows through feathered grids and fountain pens ingots of youth with wind and blether laughter in ruins, dunes and braes. The singing lark has made my life so sweet with its rich melody of unsung dreams up castle steps and fishermen’s bays to rest in ceilidh halls.
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Mariama Ifode
The blackened face from labour worn Regulus, fisher of bakers, martyrs and young lovers the light from four, or five, years hence anoints the pages of life, upon which to write. The singing lark has made my life so sweet with its rich melody of unsung dreams up castle steps and fishermen’s bays to rest in ceilidh halls.
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Senbazuru
ST PAUL’S
Home, at first, is not the comforting fire of cocoa sleepers and hearth not the tattered coat lost button frayed hem home, at first, not the murmured hell of deep retreat though mist welcomes you angels and apostles arched reaching to touch the breath of God. You crossing a rich harvest plain wheat and chaff in voices raised. Home, at last, the stripping of wall to brick and bone.
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Mariama Ifode
LOVE IN THE FELLS
There are remnants of you everywhere. Everything, except the whole. Tired nails have scratched surfaces of opaque mistrust, and found no opening to your heart. When I see you, It is as if I am looking beyond the trees, to the clearing with burning fire wood of broken dreams. You have named me ‘her’ and given me a name that is not mine. I have stopped looking at you now. I no longer believe your lips loved mine. Nor that their tale echoed the tender embrace on Lord’s Seat. You hid in the woodlands of Buttermere. Stories of secret admirations slashed through entwined hands. We are not here to be for us. We are here to testify to what you have lost. To what my love for you cannot regain. If I have seen you, I am not sure what I have seen. Is it the desperate man folding his heart in crepe paper of lead? No, alas. It is the lost boy waiting for a moment of acceptance, waiting to hear the words “you are whole.”
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Senbazuru
POEM FOR MAMA NATH
On a quiet spring afternoon you sat to have your last conversation with the angel of death: he’s not my favourite angel, and trust me, I know a few, but I suspect he doesn’t like his job much either. I imagine that you were surprised that you argued and debated offered algebraic solutions to life’s incomprehensible and unequal equations. Then you finally surrendered. I see you smiling palms cushioning cheeks because they hurt so much from laughing, laughing and laughing tears of joy baptising your cheeks. I see you with prawn samosas home-made ice-cream and birthday cake little me with such a a V.I.P. of love at her surprise party. The vacancy read: wanted, chef for never-ending daily buffets this by the way is my idea of heaven. and heaven chose you Mama Nath, Angel Chef.
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Mariama Ifode
And like your favourite television detective There’s just one more thing: I will always remember the mapping hands of love securing your daughter’s wedding dress and the sage advice on how to make the perfect cake – remember to fold not beat, you have to fold the ingredients in. Moments woven with warp actions and weft words. A rich fabric graciously prepared. by your generous and kind spirit. And as heaven dines we are left with the unforgettable aftertaste of your sweet presence and as you enter, bathed in the radiant lights of red, yellow and green and the trumpets and the reggae angels start the beat our tears are drowned out by the cry of D.J. Resurrection saying: remember her as she was, and as she is now and as she will always be.
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Senbazuru
SEVERE DELAYS
I am sorry to announce that there are severe delays on the Central Line owing to a person under the train at Queensway. I am sorry to announce that we did not stop that we did not acknowledge your presence and the loss. I am sorry to announce that you left without saying goodbye a mechanical voice leaving us bereft condemning us to care. I am sorry to announce the tutting and rolling of eyes not another one, she murmurs not another delay, he sighs. I am sorry to announce that we were too busy to create a pause in time to give you a minute’s silence to mourn you, grieve for you, give you a name. I am sorry to announce that you chose a public place to announce your private pain, the silent grief that ached for a witness and cried for a friend. You stopped us in our tracks today on the journeys to our day’s end with no room for delays minor or severe. I am sorry to announce that he is gone. 14
Mariama Ifode
THE WIFE WITH NO NAME
Write me into your breath of smiles make space for me in your dreams when you sleep cover me with your hopes and envelop me with your rights dissolving my wrongs. If I have erred, turn back and touch my salted face revive me with your love for I was fearful and brave. Whisper me to life with words that melt the grains and let us move forward beyond the plains.
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TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Someday he’ll come along, the man I love. Their late night conversations confirming what Aunt Ella used to say. His voice, resonating, down the telephone line, replacing past hurts, launching future hopes. Love has found her again. Grandpa William would celebrate these two families, both alike in dignity, in fair Pennsylvania, where we lay our scene. She the advocate of the voiceless he the teacher, and friend. Ladders of love, perched against the wall of hope. This is what Great-Uncle Henry would say. Kayaks dancing, late chances capturing. Love has found him again.
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And so the dawn is welcomed by unexpected parcels of redeemable love, and locks and bagels too. Theirs will be mornings of laughter, after an evening of play. His yeoman’s service, in her austral years, lifting the bushel further, to expose yet more of her light. From the tent at the bottom of the garden to the log cabin built with hugs, and warmed by fire kisses. Love has given them roots, and given them wings.
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I WANT THEM TO REMEMBER, THAT THERE WERE FLOWERS IN THE HOUSE I want them to remember, that there were flowers in the house That the dirt of their youth was watered by love That each growing pain produced beauty and hope And that they were loved by two I want them to remember, that there were flowers in the house That there was shelter here, from the stings and weeds of life That the vase was strong, its grip firm And that they gave us light I want them to remember, that there were flowers in the house That their teenage moods made them all the more bright That the combination of green and white, orange and coral, was theirs And that they had roots, in nourished soil I want them to remember, that there were flowers in the house That the self-conscious presence with speckled earth spoke of strength untold That this simplicity of being was a reflection of them And that their inflorescence made this house our home
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Mariama Ifode
MY WASHING BASKET IS FILLED WITH LINEN HANDKERCHIEFS The scent: Brighton Breeze a crumpled cascade of elegance surrounding blurred lines of mascara tears grace enfolding grace the three-piece suit dancing with pearls on tiptoes strung to delight. My washing basket is filled with linen handkerchiefs while Victoria and Albert rest the faded postcard of iridescent hope New England portraits of porches and picket fences painted with joy. The confetti will fall and the cupcakes, bookends to the stories of our lives I no longer recognise that image of the woman staring out to sea her grief displaced. She has followed her joy she is on the shore.
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Senbazuru
MAGNOLIA
He heaves streaks of magnolia his quiet call to prayer as he shudders tears for the unexpected guest. This was the colour they chose the stains on his calloused hands overtaking her voice the boulder of pain filling the empty room. It does not matter now the colour of the wall nor the furnishings or whether they match. When the paint tray is moistened with mourning there are moments of shame he can’t remember when he started to shake nor when he stopped, but the paintbrush is lifted once more.
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Mariama Ifode
THE BEAR
The bear emerges from the cave making noises through shrubbery and cathedral trees each stride a celebration cushioned conversation with the tortured earth smoked by summer’s haze paws tender in their caress no chase to appease the hunger in its soul only fear. In the flowing mirror a reflection of a man but the heart of a boy excused treachery and misplaced imagery of who he was thought to be. He moves on through mumbling rocks no friend nor foe, no echoes of quiet remembrance. The bear makes noises as it returns to the cave what could have been has been lost hesitant footsteps of the journey half won and yet undone it goes hungry and dies.
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Senbazuru
THE CULT
Lacertilia wakes up the guilt of the insufficient man, frightened and alone. The masquerade dancers clap and confuse crustacean rhythms and smoke from the fire held in the sky, to claim light and assign a way. Give me a name, the man pleads, and tell me I am seen. Yet there is no innocence that can survive the dictates of midnight to dawn for they say that this is how it should be and there are mats to line concrete floors and Lacertilia’s laughter rings as the bells call to worship and adore man no salvation, only slavery. The man becomes like a salt grain in water there are many and he is not alone, so he believes. On the street of testimony houses no cries from those afraid for family and friends as the gates of the compound close. Give us your daughter, Lacertilia cries no, no, not my daughter, the man replies. There is a disquiet in the soul as the man lives with oppressed prayers. The house of slavery has no windows. 22
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And the silver that lines Lacertilia’s velvet coat begins to melt in the heat of dishonesty. Shades from the Sahara Sun protect the sheep from the tail that lacerates. Escape from Lacertilia comes not in the discovery of skin encased in ermine but in the presence of the voice that cries: there is no need to find me in rituals of sacrifice and tambours in candles of starvation, for I knew you in the village, and I know you still.
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Senbazuru
LAZARUS’S DREAM
The next day Lazarus, aching from his journey took the road to the market on his bicycle, rickety and rejected from years of revelry and scorn. At the crossroads, before the path grew long he met an old man, cart laden with fruit and jars of clay. Good morning Lazarus, where to today? I go to tell my story, he said, So people may hear, and pay. The old man asked, and pay? Yes, smiled Lazarus, people will hear and say, he lives. The grapes dancing on the edge of the cart tumbled and fell. When Lazarus rolled away, crushed they remain at the crossroads where he proclaimed his fame. The old man picked up the grapes that survived to begin his journey again.
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Mariama Ifode
THE LAKESIDE RETREAT
In between slammed doors and urgent pleas to vacate burnt toast and coffee stained scarves upturned plastic cups and the perfect puddle: apple juice and a drawbridge made of straw between the artistic attire of jersey, trousers and mismatched socks there lies the lakeside retreat. In between Greenwich Mean and Eastern Daylight wakes the official letterhead and fingertip dance plastic prisms of hand-picked greens between the queen’s taster, and vine tomatoes washed down with air there lies the lakeside retreat. In between social monopoly and canapÊs she is sinking in her crystal of Chardonnay mimicked laughter and bouts of plastic smiles between the pavilion of pain brushed cheeks and rushed voices there lies the lakeside retreat.
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BARROW’S PREDICTION
Each barrow was one metre by fifty like a tea leaf waiting to prove its strength it needs not the saucer nor the lady old and frail making her pension in the funfair tent. Instead each barrow furrows a path like a skater on winter’s ice reading your life in each track a memory each wheel a compromise a bargaining chip. Each barrow bourns a new tale of accents and woven correspondence written in machine oil. It carries a manuscript of who you are and who you once were matching you with ancestors before it wheels to and fro.
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THE KNEELER
Two sacks of flour fall on a cushioned bed their weight dusting the floor with reluctant prayers for the dying mother and no response easy to bear flour coats the chairs exposing hairs and engraved petitions muted madness beyond compare and imprints of guilt come face to face with life. When the child arrives, he lifts the cushioned bed amassed curls fall wearily where suffering laid therein lies the world between flour and where resting head remains.
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SENBAZURU
It begins with a fold, good fortune awaits. Unfolding a past to refold, going back over the lines you’ve made. There’s a lot of unfolding and folding, she says, of rubbished time and necessary waste, of coloured wings. The neck stretched to see above the lines you’ve made. Once and twice, no, once again. Each crevice speaks, unfolded in singing hands of something new.
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Mariama Ifode
PUZZLE COOKIES
Leader, guiding sister star you, giggling high and giggling low in daddy’s swinging arms. Mesmerising blend of X’s and Y’s, you half goth, half metallica bound in unending love intelligently, majestically created, undeniably iridescent. Princess, translated elegantly in maturity, you say the word: Cambridge digesting every morsel letter regurgitating epic prose. You, regal at four, proud of going to the bathroom of one’s own on one’s own. No nonsense, you tell it like it is. Looking out of the window false intellect suggests that we humans too could fly once our wings are developed. I am told we are not birds. You name it and it exists, calling my rough, washerwoman’s hands soft, and like all children you make us more than we are. Placing blue train pieces together, they suddenly become puzzle cookies, and I learn from you what it is to be engaged in the living. 29
Senbazuru
HISPANIOLA
Mournful cries ruptures land and sea and canonise saints saluting a tearful morn. Bloodstained stones of prayers buried under psalmist’s song mock the army of angels descending to roll the stones away. Mingled pasts of rebellious slaves watch their wealth sail East with the rage of the restless wake shuddering the nightly repose. Hispaniola! no drums of freedom from gravestones greet the etchings of death on your people’s skin. Hispaniola! We wait, we weep, we mourn.
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SUNSET BETWEEN WEST HAMPSTEAD AND KILBURN Sunset between West Hampstead and Kilburn: a golden jubilee. It tells me I can be whoever I want to be that the world is mine and all that’s in it. There are no postcodes and national rail services to foil dreams and cling-film promises and old images of characters fade. Truly I tell you, none of that matters now. Instead I sit and stare at the sunset between Kilburn and West Hampstead and I know that this is mine.
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Senbazuru
OUR LOVE IS LIKE COOKING SOYA BEANS
Our love is like cooking soya beans: It takes ages to soften. After the boil, the shedding of skin, the exposure, the hardness seduced, coaxed to mush. It needs to soak, our love. Overnight, over years, with tears I decided, for longer. And I watched it expand in the water, surrounded, submerged, it acquiesced. That was the first stage, and the last.
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Mariama Ifode
THE CHAMPION
There we were, at the running track, the start of a new race in our lives, our equal pace and your sunflower steps bringing light to all who passed. Now you are gone. You have gone ahead to finish this race we started together, and though you fought hard, you lost. Yet you won my heart again, with each fleeting day. You renovated my house of love after seventeen long years. And now, here I am, carrying your voice, guiding those left behind, holding strong. When I think of you, I think of how much I loved you, and love you still. And though I go on, the champion, my champion, rests.
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IN MEDIA RES
Love began with an olive on a toothpick,
in media res between being chosen and being eaten in the sharp prick of fate, picking you and losing me. The post-intellectual-talk nibbles catching us unawares, glimpsing behind the masks of our untouched desire, reminding us we’d already met in the open plains of our dreams, and in the inner crevices of your hope, not mine. I couldn’t reach the table, you graciously obliged. I asked for an olive on a toothpick. You thought I wanted more, when all I really wanted was the olive.
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THE SILENT COMPANION
There is a heartbreak for which there are no words no commas nor sighs only the space between each page and line. It is hell with no consuming fire no torment from demons without only within each curl of flame no light for the brokenness. Oh! How the dawn seemed so bright! Yesterday, and yesteryear washed with muddied soap and barbed-wire sponge and bubbles and suds of The Grand Design. I am numb. The breaking continues of heart, in between bus stops and shopping lists morning dew now nails densely strewn.
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VETERAN’S DAY
Each morsel of Mac and cheese makes no sound of gun battles of the previous life. The long table a last supper with no friends to remember the sacrifice. The field of pavements and cardboard covers every inch a soldier, every yard a man. Fallen to his knees he awaits a reprieve from stripes and fallen stars. In amongst paper flags and proud pins parents long gone. He remembers the echo of commands to focus on the task at hand. Hands that now hide the shame from cameras and the reportage on making meals. Food that feeds but does not heal, broken shrapnel and tanks that giveth and taketh away. The hesitancy of a man who once was, and is no more waits at the counter and asks for more. 36
Mariama Ifode
Eye contact broken to save his soul from breaking into tears for friends, for country. Each morsel of Mac and cheese cannot foretell that sound of bugle and gunpowder and the solitary bell.
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SANDCASTLES
She is too old for sandcastles turrets number three as she makes a flag from her silk scarf a moat there must surely be to ward off the one who made her black and blue the colours of the bucket and spade. Today she goes to sea, to build sandcastles and hightowers, a scarecrow that seagulls mock and jeer she continues to build sandcastles that stood for thirty years. The waves collude to meet sandcastles at dusk, and her linen suit flecked with sea salt and sadness face the ramparts with gold plated muffins and costume jewellery playing make believe. She is too old for sandcastles: the castles are made of sand.
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THE REUNION
They sat on a bench faced to sea. how did they get here? Mirrors lost in unsent letters and martyred invitations to share in accomplishments, like relish to garnish misplaced chances to talk. They overlooked the sea of health scare cliffs and mildewed dreams. What was the silence meant to say that their words could not? The faded address book, and perfunctory cards at Christmas and birthdays, no hoorays. When they saw the fishermen with load for market and the city pack. Where did they miss their turn? They saw themselves, in net and hand, friendship, between boat and bay, theirs again perhaps, one day.
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THE PEARL NECKLACE
Elle, brought home an old WWII ammunitions box where Esther’s treasures, not much interest to anybody else, were kept. Several weeks of cleaning revealed its hiding place far from the front line where her husband would fight and fly to liberate his own and others from horrors untold and scenes from the apocalypse. When they opened the ammunitions box, perched deep in thought, expecting old photographs and trinkets of her memory in decline, it turned out that Esther had wrapped a pearl necklace inside. If she had chosen the spot as somewhere no one would look for the days of her youth she was wise, and right.
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Mariama Ifode
METHUEN’S MEDICINE
It was like being stuck in the letter box half in, half out waiting to be pulled from either side, hoping for a miracle, while false promises abound of healing and Pentecostal preaching, souls revived with mistakes, makeshift tents for the surgeons of the middle-class refugees awaiting plucking for perfection, paying guides selling mistruths. There is no cure for the greed of the soul. Only the light of forbearance from the poor. Methuen’s medicine gives today what tomorrow it will take to makes all things new as is due, or so they say.
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THE PAINFUL YEARS
The cold in St Petersburg did not cover the cracks nor fireside readings of Joyce and Friel as we waited to translate our lives so we could understand how the West Coast drive and splendour did nothing to ease the vows, taut, strung to breaking point. The tree stump and flaking bark takes our stares away from the fiddler who haunts with melodic muse. Guests and cake, and honeymoon, no match for clipped commentary on the intruders in our home, and the disposal of take away tins, and the cells of solitary confinement placed in our bed. The decade closed with the separation of church and state and the house we bought.
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There were no bells to mark the arrival of the shoe-box wrapped in brown paper, filled with reminders of the life we’ d lost of the things you’d kept that I’d forgot. That aisle wasn’t meant to lead to doormat now scorched in the shape of the box.
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SEAFARERS
In the Western Isles a burnt ship fair filled from centuries past, of pillage and plunder, and marriage and tears to give up, settle down, go free of the sword and pin that held the cloak, close to its master’s skin. Through ocean crossing to battle myth and underwater creatures of the monolithic fleet, enraged by profit and fuelled by survival, they go, they pick from nets drawn by machines to feed the masses and give air to the platoons. Around 8.00 a.m. the banana peels, bowing to the silent handler who crated and labelled, for the voiceless men torn from family and friends to play father Christmas and stamp and deal, calling home at every port to give signs of life, and the greater sacrifice for cars, and clothes, and the cosmetic pose.
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MISTAKES AND MAGPIES
Quite magically, we found each other. In the loneliness of being ignored light and joy, laughter unknown. Your different fabrics, a patchwork some home-made quilt, wine tastings, an expert in cheese and medieval forts. Me, a hungrier tailor seeing the stitch to make all things right cooking classes, stew and meatballs, and plenty of loaves to feed the few. The weekend of oranges and burnt red leaves, heralding our new beginning, sheets of mired pretence and golden promises, touches of caressing eyes, and hands. If winter should find us here my, what delight, what charm of whistled remembrance we shall keep in the stores for older years, when we are lost, when we have lost our way again. We return to our lives, to the displaced selves in frames of pictures someone else took, there can be no sorrow now only silence and seven years and Judas’s kiss remains, and the fluttering of magpies’ wings.
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SKELETONS AND MARIGOLDS
Imagine the hinterlands of Surrey feverish with the return of the spirits once a year. An opening of Mictlan’s gates, with no officials from the V&A to catalogue or record Aunt Adela’s return, timed to interrupt our procession to the cemetery. Aunt Adela’s overgrown handbag filled with sugared skulls, skeletons and marigolds sway with the chants underneath amulets and food offerings to celebrate in story and song and affirm your being revive your soul. In between the face-painting and altar making, Aunt Adela asks who was giving granddad his pills, and where else Alfredo thought he should be but here, and why Victoria had started dating so young, and how on earth the land was gone, and what about her bequest to the National Trust. We had no answers for such days and instead sat, and ate, burying our words in the picnic at her grave.
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Mariama Ifode
LET GOOD THINGS HAPPEN
Let good things happen let the barley rain and the morning bristle and tingle to tell of a new dawn. Let the echoes of pain cease let the cave fill with laughter and the promises, in soft repose, on the rise and pause of love. Let the path curve let it move the strife that made the journey blessed let the wind respond with a yay or nay. Let good things happen let there be a rupture in the tale of how things were the ringing sounds of amen, for this is the day of drizzling joy.
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WHISKY ‘MARY’ MAC
What is the mathematics of life? What must be added, or subtracted, or multiplied, to give sense to the ache and pain? Whisky ‘Mary’ Mac, the flower that makes fertile ground when deserts encroach. On the stage of quills and island discs and strummed guitar there is a bright scent that fills the soul. Whisky ‘Mary’ Mac, the blankets of colour build a home and sing to make the toiled earth grow In the waiting room rich corolla and fragrant tapestry make known that life is here Whisky ‘Mary’ Mac, proclaim the beauty of your birth, and bloom. It is not yet time for you to go home.
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L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S
MARIAMA IFODE
Mariama Ifode is a secondary school teacher of Modern Foreign Languages. She is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, and has just completed her doctorate in Spanish at the University of Cambridge. This, her first collection, comprises poems written at disparate times and places, and offer spaces of encounter with life and death.
A thousand paper cranes, a thousand thoughts strung upon the voice of a poet. In this collection, Mariama reaches out to touch with her words those who read these poems. It is the blessing of poetry upon the readers’ souls, the universal ‘thisness’ of our humanity that transcends language. Richard Montgomery
The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore - so it has been written indicative of hope. Printed by Kestrel Print Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland
ISBN 978-1-907276-99-6 £10.00