English Poems From Number6

Number 6 Number 1 was involved in the Suffrage movement A Perthshire girl, she worked in Lincoln Superintendent in a psychiatric hospital Dr Myra Mackenzie, died at the age of eighty A very healthy specimen of woman Number 2 was Jeannie Charlotte Macleod Born in Edinburgh, schooled in Aberdeen A product ofthe Aberdeen High School for Girls One week after working as a doctor, Jeannie killed herself, a loss to medicine Number 3 was Margaret Duncan from Turriff House surgeon at a children's hospital, Sheffield One day after her first child was born She died, aged 27, of ‘Cardiac Failure' Number 4, Isabella Gunn of Fochabers, Married a Methodist missionary Travelled to Dichpali in India Set up a leprosy hospital, served it well Died of pneumonia in 1932 Number 5 was Isabel Copland Smith She was an M.O. in London, Worked in infant welfare and maternity Died aged 70, her night dress burned Number 6 was Catherine Anderson of Ceylon From Junior House Surgeon in Britain To M.O. in Ceylon, lecturer in children's diseases Trained in tropical illness, FRCS from Edinburgh In WW1 she served in Salonika, in Corsica And finally served herself, goodbye to cancer From ship to sea, closing the final chapter of her life Matter of fact, like stepping out from her clothes Sri Lankan Welcome When you step off the plane at Colombo The heat hits you full in the face like a punch The taxi driver tells you in graphic detail Of death by Tuk Tuk, the region's three wheeled gnat Ignore him. Prepare to be astonished and delighted, This is the beautiful tear drop, hanging from India's lobe This is Ceylon of the tea fields, most delicate tea on the globe In-Bred I come from a tribe of in- breds Cousins and second cousins intermarried This was our norm; my father was kin to my mother My uncle was kin to his wife. Cousins wed cousins You knew what you were getting with a relative I was into my teens when I learned the shocking fact Most people married strangers Horror of horrors, Some even wed out-with the North East pool! I opted not to cast my net too wide I chose a Deeside man, dark like my father Of farming stock, who handled a gun like my kindred A Doric speaker, too.Like a herd of pedigree cows, we knew our lineage Stamped by the common brand of heritage For Morven,2 years dead Athletic, headstrong, handsome and a rebel How I regret the many things unsaid; No parent ever should outlive their offspring; Rotting away, I live, while you are dead. The places where we went are still as busy, Today I drop my gaze, I quickly pass To walk the streets you walked is still as painful, As treading barefoot over broken glass. If there was any way to change position, To raise you from Death's desolate domain I'd bargain with the Devil in a heartbeat Dear child of mine, so you might live again Oshawa Over thesteel-grey ocean, Home of the wolfand bear, Scotland's lost children scatter Round the forests and Great Lakes there; Gone from the glen and village Each carries a favourite scene A frozen memory of homeland Where the birks are ever green. Do they live up to expectations These stormy, New World coasts? When folk die, in the wide diaspora Does Scotland reclaim their ghosts? Passengers Road-killed stags in the boot, ready for gralloching Wartime Canadian lumberjacks in the boot, (When the bus was full, with the lure of a local dance) Climbers, hikers, skiers, farmers, families Loaf to Crathie, mince to Braemar, coffins Whisky, poachers, a man with a glass eye Lovers, drunks, the driver always waited for his regulars The buses ran to irregular hours, to suit the public need And to Hell with the fixed bureaucracy of timetables Typhoid Summer Oh we were the rabid dogs, The lepers, the black plague bearers The sewer rats, the bogey-men Thank God for our NHS carers Quarantine, health prison, strict incarceration Delirium, moaning, the system under stress Companies ruined, town treated as a pariah Citizens panicked, a symptom of distress Milk left on the bottom step The family business wrecked And testing, testing, testing Inspect, inspect, inspect That summer the city suffered Till all was over, Amen! And after, return to normal Milk on the top step then Death of a Career This was the year the city dissolved around me The snow-white horse of hope went to the abattoir The forest of the future shrivelled and curled Like an old hag's nails, post mortem, black and charred This was the year the house of cards collapsed A lizard crawled away with the Ace ofHearts Centre stage, the joker split his sides Limping away, the might-have-beens, the maybes A chandelierdwindled down to a candle stub This was the year my life dissolved around me My useless hands like talentless lumps of meat The career was a long time in dying Whimpering in a corner, a beaten cur Shadow Memory Stumbling along the corridors of memory, I recall little. He is an absence, a family ikon Exchanging English-Scots for Portuguese His neighbours weren't afraid to use their guns Shot dead intruders creeping in from favelas To relieve them of their luxuries and comforts The police, it seems, could be bribed not to inquire Was Scotland too challenging? Limiting? Too confining? A couple of postcards a year, a phone call at the Bells Didn't cut the mustard when it counted It's hard to miss a shadow that lay so lightly The Sunflowers (Ross Clinic 1960s) If you stare long enough at a painting of Van Gogh's sunflowers The heads turn into a pride of lions with fiery manes Or Catherine wheels whirring in break neck agony cc-crack, cc-crack, cc-crack They are all consuming suns Swallowing galaxies of onlookers They are venomous sea anemones They are explosions of pus All are cut off from the living Dying in their yellow beauty Their petals like loose teeth rattling in a painted skull Image, and the power of the image Like a spark in a tinder box Exploding within the mind's imagination The Witches in the Wood Watch the witches in the wood In their cauldron mix a spell Deadly nightshade, strangleweed Devil's guts- the plant from hell Hemlock, firethorn, dead horse arum Corpse flower, ghost plant, doll's eye too Monkshood, wolfsbane, belladonna Blackthorn stirs the evil brew Watch the witches in the wood Keep as silent in the grave If those creatures of the dark Hear you, nothing can you save Treasures Lost & Won In the 60s father gave mother an eternity ring To mark their years of marriage. In time came A musquash fur, complete with pearls The latest American trend to cross the Atlantic Is the ‘push present', the reward for completing labour Not a bunch of roses, a box of chocs Kim Kardashian West's gift Was a Lorraine Schwartz diamond choker Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William, Was given Kiki McDonough amethyst and diamond earrings In India,7% of girls are married under 15 On the Nepalese border,8 year olds are wed Girls under 15 are 5 times more likely to die In the pains of childbirth One 11 year old's body went into shock on her honeymoon Requiring hospitalization, before being sent home A Yemeni bride of 8, died of internal injuries Received on her wedding night After the pretty dress, the shiny trinkets, Some sweets and candies The horror and reality of rape in the defenceless dark By a merciless adult in the full blown thrust of lust A hidden treasure the world turned its back on