OH, LOVERS

   OH, LOVERS

You never should have fallen in love,
Never touched those lips with your trembling mouth
Nor mingled your breath with a breath not your own,
Until, breathless, you were brought down by desire.

Blinded by love,
Your eyes burnt out
By that implacable face staring at you,
Pulling you down
With its deadly understanding
Of your sick passion.
And you, refusing to see it mocked you.

There was always some confection of delight
Waiting to engage you.
Some new trick to disarm and enchant you. 
A decorative something
To hold on to. To plan.  To cling to.
As well put a snowflake on hot iron
For nothing could save you.

Lovers are lost
When one lover no longer loves,
And the other lives on yesterday’s passion.

                                               © 2018 Gwen Grant

THE SOLDIER’S HOME

 

THE SOLDIER’S HOME

The soldier’s home!
Filling the house with khaki and brass buttons,
Coming in the dead of night
By the street light,
His boots banging on the roadway
Making the darkness jump.

We heard the mouth organ first,
Dancing its way through closed doors,
Skipping up the stairs
Tapping its melody on the scrubbed wooden floors
Until it was sure we had all woken.

Behind its music trickling into freezing rooms,
Covering the icy beds, making frosty pillows,
He came in, brown as a berry, burnt by foreign suns,
Calling for company and not very welcome.

War breaking out on every bedside,
Pulling covers away from frozen bodies,
Laughing, ‘Wakey! Wakey! Rise and shine.’

‘Give over. Stop it. Go away,’

Until a voice called crossly.
‘That will be quite enough. Stop teasing them
And all of you come down!’

Almost too much to ask
When the bitterly cold linoleum
Snapped off all our toes.

And so we woke into this icy frosted morning
Shouting joyfully into khaki and brass buttons,
Into heavy boots and the much loved face
Of almost a stranger,
Into the music of his mouth organ,

‘The Soldier is home! He is home!’

©2025 Gwen Grant

THE WEDDING RING

I’m not keen on the way the past suddenly sandbags us
bringing the years past roaring into the present. This poem
came from thoughts of the days when gardens were so
important they took a lot of thinking about. And as for
wedding rings, I don’t remember ever seeing a man wearing
one and my Mum’s ring had long gone by the time I was
aware of them. But I loved these things in the past
and that love has spilled over into the present.

THE WEDDING RING

My mother was small and fierce,
Hair so long and dark
It was thought
Night had fallen early
On her shoulders.

She wore flowered aprons
With big pockets,
To put lost chickens in.
Small, yellow chickens
Almost new born,
Who pecked the grains of corn
Lying in the folds
Of a lovely cotton geranium.

Her wedding ring was gone,
Lost among the garden potatoes.
She wept about that.
Tried to climb the tree
To see if the magpie
Had it in her nest.
‘For magpies love gold,’ she said.
But we all knew the nest was empty.

For years and years,
She would rub that ringless finger,
Until I was certain
That at some time
The ring had been found

And my small, fierce mother
Had simply cheated science
By rubbing it into invisibility.

©2021 Gwen Grant

POACHER’S MOON

One of my favourite things is walking.  I used to walk a lot at night,
loving the darkness  and the way the world changed in the fields
and hedgerows, the way the flowers stood out like small moons. 
This was an encounter with a poacher.  They were such silent and
still men, stiller even than the trees and when they heard anyone
coming, it was as if they turned to wood themselves, frightening you
out of your wits when you spotted them.

      POACHER’S MOON

That night, when I was out,
Walking the frozen fields,
He was the only stranger,
The Poacher.
Standing still as a death stone
Under the oak tree,
Switching on his head lamp
Only when I was past.

Blinding me and the rabbit,
Blinding me and the hare.

And I wondered if this was the time
Me and the pheasant,
The rabbit and the fox
Would all lie down together,
All freeze and die together
In the white and frosted furrows,
To lie there forever.
For ever and for ever.

For I had seen the Poacher,
By dint of old and wicked country magic
Of Deadly Nightshade and Henbane,
Leap into the sky above us.
His head lamp shining away
Every shadow that would save us.

Until I looked again and saw
The Poacher’s moon. 

                                         ©2019 Gwen Grant

THOSE WRITERS!

THOSE WRITERS!

Writers are always certain
Those they write about
Don’t know what has been done to them,
Don’t know and wouldn’t care
If they did.

The writers are wrong.

Those captured people,
Old ghosts returned,
Some happy, some furious,
Have a deadly understanding
Of what the writer is about.

Lifting their voices in complaint,
Shaking writers’ cold shoulders,
Awakening them from stolen dreams
When they should have been sleeping,
‘Leave the dreams alone, pal,’
They know.  And one day
They are going to come back
To haunt them.

Serve those writers right!
Capturing people’s souls without permission.
Caught for ever in a remorseless
Circle of bad and good.
Caught for ever in a circle of helpless love.

                                 ©2021 Gwen Grant.
PRIVATE KEEP OUT!  by Gwen Grant
published by Penguin Vintage  Children’s Classics
available in paperback and as ebook