Her high cheekbones round as Golgotha
swept clean of suffering, were pinched ruddy
as a child. The light diffused there, today
remains immaculate. Every soul she sees seems
already a a ghost. One would fall
right through a hug, and laugh, or pose.
"Mr Sullen!" How she got the sepia in her voice
is a mystery. But it sounds like it was made
for the shape of her mouth. Hear High German.
Her child flies in the kitchen door full of the fire
that will burn him out. Her mouth is a horizon
seismic at the periphery, seismic with something
yellow. "How deep is that in the flower my tart-sweet?"
"Mama, it is as deep as the water in the old mill stream."
She kneads dough that is already risen,
baked golden. She tastes a palm-rolled ball of that,
because it can rise to the size of the world.
It expands from her palate. Like lens flare it glows
around every thought in her head. Death is less
tangible, at the corner of that.
Her sulllen child is posed on a chair.
She stands behind. He is a hollow space
consumed by the future. You can reach
right through him and touch the why
that is there when he dies.
In pencil on the back of the photo: (Aunty Mary's)
daughter & grandson died Jan 1922
