Her name? Her name is Generose, 
See now how her story flows

through the sounds of war anew,
our ruler coming out to say:
‘Bombs! Again! Away!’  Through 
minions mincing with regret
at what we need to do and why 
evil ones must die. 

Through the soldiers jumping to; 
through me, and my kind, left  bereft 
behind, nowhere to be
except here, hoping to woo 
a person like you.

I hope you can you come with me 
I need us to get to a place 
far from here, where four or five 
million...? No. Let me begin again... 

Let me start with yesterday.
I was clearing my house,
‘and not before time’ 
is what you would say if you’d seen it. 
I was making two piles
– to hold or to go? - 
when I found it: the book. 
Lying open, face down, waiting 
for me to return. 

I shrugged off the me who likes 
to think she can think 
herself safe, and picked it back up 
where I’d stopped, and dropped, 
down again into that wood 
where four million people once died. 
(Or was it five?) 
Yes, genocide.

One woman’s name was Generose, 
see now how her story goes.

When they’d hear the trucks of the killers 
roar in, the villagers would grab the hands
of their children and flee to the trees. 
At night they’d lie down on dead leaves, 
knuckling dirt into dreams. 

One day Generose and her family 
were too slow to go. The soldiers 
came in with machete and gun, 
hacked her husband to death, then
made her climb up to lie down
on her own kitchen table, 
in front of her daughter and son.
“We’re hungry,” they said as they 
cut off her leg and sliced it 
into six pieces and fried them 
up in her pan. 

Yes, name her name, it’s Generose. 
Listen. Listen to how it goes.

They ordered her children to partake.
The boy knew how to refuse
and was shot on the spot. The girl,
in terror, attempted to try. I ask you:
can you imagine? Not the family 
so much as those soldiers, 
the teaching it took to create them. 

(Where this happened was already famed
for kings who came from afar to take 
what they would. What one liked 
to take was the hands
of the men he’d enslaved, 
the ones who had failed to bring in 
their quota of crop. And chop 
them off.)

Consumed by the sight of the girl 
trying to force her mother 
as meat through her mouth, the men 
somehow allowed Generose down
from the table to crawl from the house. 
And so, somehow, she survived. 
And so, she has heard, did her daughter. 

And so she believes that some day 
she’ll see her again and she works 
every which way for that day. 

Why tell you all this? 
May I reverse the question, 
Ask you how you feel when you
hear it? That’s why the poet 
wrote her book, though to regurgitate 
that leg made her sick for weeks after,  
to show how how the same choices 
call to us all. Kings will do what kings do, 
soldiers too, and if you don’t 
want to know, I won’t keep you. 

Let me back to the book that knows 
what to own, what should be let go.
Let me wait in the place
I’ve come to call home 
with those who decline
to oppose.  Let me hold to my hope 
that the girl might be found, 
and enfolded again, with
their two mourned dead men  

so we all might recall what we’ve been 
taught so well to forget: 
the long-lasting hold, the cast iron 
caress of the mother. 

Her name, this time, was Generose, 
and that is how the story goes.

Your words must wash the floor for love,
I heard it all declare. I kissed my pen,
swore this decree to air.

Then set to work on bended knee, a childlike creep
through house and street, to clean through
what’s encrusted there.

It’s done for you, kind reader, dear,
who walks my words across the page,
who seeks clear ground in marks I make:

the glisten in your gleaning eye,
that shines with mine, us both to see
how in the clearing, all can be.

Listen, my parents,
the grasses are crawling,
the trees are all thrumming.
Soon, birds won’t be able to sing.
Listen. Hear me. Our time
is for turning. If the old ways don’t die, we can’t win.

*

Listen, my children:
our grasses are crawling,
our trees, yes, they’re thrumming
birds know what they know as they sing.
Listen, hear it. True time
ever calling. Lay down your despairing. Join in.

Down by the river bank I see
a life-ring on a line,
and think of how we used to swim
in talk, your hands in mine,
our arms encircled round your wound,
that never-ending need.
Your life was so unfairly hard,
you felt, and I agreed.
So when low words rose from your depths
and surged up spitting froth,
I let them pass. I held the line.
‘We’ll surf these waves’, I thought.

And so we went till my cross came,
a knife to cut me free
commanding me to cast away,
insisting that I see.
It showed the ring my thought had made
was twisted as old bone,
that we were not four hands conjoined.
I clutched, alone, my own.

Down by the river bank I weep
for how we went off course:
those harsh, embittered words you said
the love they slapped to loss.
And my warped need to drop too deep,
the blood and breath I gave
to trying to buoy up a life
that was not mine to save.

We lie together in a gifted bed
knowing the alarm is set to sound,
your thigh’s a seat I’m settled on,
mine’s wrapped warmly round your hand.
We burrow in the minutes that remain
before the clock will cut in
to announce
the time
has come

for us

to peel apart.
Shall it be me, or you,
who first will break,
get up from our given place, depart
its dear embrace?

In the amber of a late October,
altered by illness
and a mauling from friends, we have
come again to London, and come
one to the other,
in truth, it seems
for the first time
in twenty-something years.

These are our days.

Above us, white lines from Heathrow
streak across the sky and a silver
airplane flashes in the tawny sun,
its underwing turned gold.

Ahead is Christmas. Outside
the bang-blast of fireworks, and
the tread of traffic dancing
to the drum of what must be done.

Not us, not now.

In here, our clothes removed, our skin
cells open, one to the other,
once a day, we practice: love.
And the stillness
of the season holds us, bathed
in something more than kindness.

It was you who led, as male
desire is wont to do, *****, unyielding,
it cut to our truth. And I who thought of practice:
that Buddhist word, that way
to be, to being
in the place that one is in.

So now we meet each evening to meld
the passing and the coming life
suspended
clothes off, upon a cushioned floor,
each time (it seems) anew,
each stroke the first, again,
in hours that know just what they hold

in this, our stilly autumn
in these, our golden days.

(Inspired by Joe O’C – for whom I’m sure it’s not like this!)


The great Artist is at work.
Around his house, his children move
in whispers, while
his wife lays down a dinner tray,
tells that it’s there
with two soft taps – no more – upon the study door.

The great Artist begs his work
to yield to him, to offer up
its answers, while
outside, his children move away
(as children always will, towards play)
and food that took
an hour to cook – or more – turns cold there on the floor.