A Woman Clothed in Words (8 page)

(1986)

Rowan

In your deep palm

the berry broke open

spitting out a pronged seed

the curved shoot was olive grey

•

now the sapling is in leaf

the lowest panes of the window

are scratched by its flexing twigs

and dusty fronds

•

in the night there was a drumming of thunder

a lightning bolt buried itself

in the dry clay

I saw an old woman with hollow breasts

standing out there

amber sap ran down her parted legs

there was nothing she could do about it

•

before noon all the panes of my window

will be obscured by flowering spikes

moving in the wind

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as the earth cools it shrinks

and I with it

soon I become
small as a nut

on the branch of a tree

small as a beetle that swims in a pond

•

my country is the waterleaf that

I am crawling over

•

and when the dry wind

sucks up the sloughs

all the trees will fall

there will be nothing but tundra

a few acres of glowing

and stunted flowers

•

as the earth cools and shrinks

winter comes for the last time

•

I and this whole world

hidden under one flake of snow

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a grey board coffin

floated down the river last
night

this morning we found it

heaved up in the shallows

•

we dragged it in with a winch

fetched a crowbar

broke the lid

•

what is this

a pale woman

clasping her pale child

a fish trailing spawn, with

a hook in her mouth

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A man bought a battered dirty doll at the city market,

which he had to pass through on his way to work. Not

all of her painted complexion was still there.

•

At home he stood her on a stool by the kitchen window,

so that she could watch the children playing outside in

the alley. A young girl stopped and greeted the doll with

a cruel derisive salute.

•

The man was furious. He opened the window and threw

the doll at the girl who caught her and threw her into a

tree, where a swarm of very tiny bees settled in her straw

hair.

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the beginning of this poem is a beckoning it is

myself or some
other gesturing in a house almost

dark you can hardly see the raised hand but narrow

currents of air pass between the slightly parted

fingers and you feel that on your face

•

there in the halflight an old woman is dressing

her hair pressing the bobbypins in everywhich way

so long as it stays up she murmurs

•

while she was sleeping the harsh plains wind has

blown gritty particles of snow through the cracks

round the windowpanes and doorjamb she decides

not to put out the cat who cringes between the wall

and the unlit stove

•

now she turns the burner under a scoured pot of

milk in which she sees last summer’s sky with

her fingers she stirs the clouds there is a

small plane flying through them in a westerly

direction she can hear the drone of its engine

in the distance

The Story of the Heartberry

Once, in a
country not so very far from here, there lived a band of wandering people. They had never found a place of their own and so they wandered through the world gathering nuts and berries and digging roots to eat.

You can imagine what a hard life these people led. It was hard for the wise elders, who had to decide where the people would go next. It was hard for the mothers and fathers, who had so often to pack their belongings and roll up their tents and carry baskets of food and crying babies over stony plains and soggy marshes and bushland full of brambles and thorntrees. It was hardest of all for the children. Just as they got used to a place, and began to know where the streams flowed and the flowers grew, and which birds nested and sang in which trees, they would be off again on another journey.

One morning the procession of elders walked through the encampment, the oldest of all blowing on a seashell that served as a trumpet. “Moving day – Moving day!” they shouted. “Time to pack – Time to move along!” Then the people gathered up their things, threw them into oxcarts, and off they trekked to another site where perhaps food would be more plentiful or the water cleaner and cooler.

They did all this cheerfully, for who knows: in the new place there could be crabapple trees, or wild carrots, or fallen logs humming with bees and honey. They sang as they journeyed, but how they wished for a place of their own where they could settle down and build a proper village.

And so they travelled on for many days until the food they had brought with them had almost run out. Night was falling, and they were forced to make camp. Wearily they huddled round a smoky fire, too tired even to put up their tents against the drizzling rain.

When the sun rose and warmed the earth they awoke and found themselves on a level plain with a stream of pure water running through it. Nearby rose a forest with plenty of berry bushes and nut trees at its edges. But it was not yet time for nuts, and the berries were still hard and green. Although the children were hungry they decided to explore the forest and see what they could find among the trees. Would there be fierce wildcats? Would there be strange and beautiful birds? Would there be friendly chipmunks and rabbits?

Amongst the trees there were berries that grew close along the ground, and the children almost stepped on them before they noticed them. There were still a few white blossoms among the scented leaves but mostly there were just berries and berries and berries. Some were not yet ripe, and these the children left for later. There were plenty of ripe ones, and the children ate and ate until they were full. Then they took off their caps and hats, and filled these to the brim until they were full too.

Now these berries were in the shape of little hearts, red and shiny, and so the children named them heartberries. It was a patch of wild strawberries that they had come upon. Such strawberries! They were bigger, and juicier, and redder than any strawberries that you and I have ever seen. It seemed to the children that the berries were a sign that their people should settle in this place, and so they ran back to camp singing and shouting and carrying their hats full of berries. Their fathers and mothers heard them from a long way off and walked into the forest to meet them and see what all the fuss was about.

And it came about just as the children had wished. This place was just what the people had been looking for, and they settled on a grassy meadow near the running stream and not far from the place where the heartberries grew. There they built huts from forest boughs woven in and out with the long grasses of the plains. These huts were cool in the summer, and in the winter there was plenty of fallen wood from the forest to keep their fires burning. Elders and parents, babies and children, they all sat around the warm fires in winter. Some wove baskets, some carved toys and spoons from wood, and they all joined in the songs and dances that told the long tales of their wanderings.

All spring the people worked in the little plots they had cleared in the grassy meadows. Season after season they sowed seed and they pulled weeds and they hoed between the rows. Gradually the plots became fields, and the people grew more and more skilled at growing roots and leaves and beans and grain. They even planted some of the berry bushes and nut trees in their gardens so that these would be close at hand for gathering in the fall.

As for the heartberries, these remained only in the forest, and every summer all the people went there to gather the fruit and to sing and dance and perform special ceremonies, for after all it was the heartberry that had first persuaded them to settle in this place.

The little village beside the forest became every year more prosperous, and the people now had good crops and an easy life. They grew so many vegetables and grains that they were able to take some every week to the market in the city, and sell them for a good deal of money with which they bought clothes and pots and pans and all sorts of falderals and fiddle-diddles that they had never before even thought of.

The grownups were convinced that it was their own hard work that had brought about this great change in the fortunes of the band. But the children knew better. They knew that these happy times came from the strawberries, the sacred heartberries, that grew in the woods each summer without any human help, and which fed their spirits just as the corn and beans and potatoes fed their bodies.

One year the grownups decided that, since the strawberries were so delicious and so unfailing in their blossoming and their fruiting, it would be a good idea to transplant them to their fields and cultivate them as a cash crop. They thought about how rich they would become. They would be able to build great mansions of marble and polished granite; they would be able to go about every day in garments of satin and velvet; they would no longer have to work in the fields, for they could hire laborers to do that for them.

And so one fine morning in late summer they prepared a picnic for the children and told them they could have the whole day off from work. All they had to do was to play in the stream and enjoy themselves, and keep an eye on their little brothers and sisters of course. As soon as the children were out of sight the mothers and fathers took their spades and trowels and baskets and went into the forest to dig up the heartberry plants and move them to a warm sunny place in the fields where they were sure to grow and spread and bear even bigger and juicier fruits next season.

When the children came home in the evening and saw what their parents had done they were heartbroken. But it was too late to change things. A great sadness came over them.

At first the strawberries grew well. The next spring they flowered so freely that the whole garden was white with blossom. The parents were delighted and even the children began to hope that things would turn out well after all. Then, one night in May, a hard frost blackened the whole berry patch, even the leaves and roots were shriveled. The children knew that there would be no Heartberry Feast that year – perhaps never again!

This was a bad year for the village. After the frost came a great drought, and none of the crops did well. There was only just enough food for the villagers: nothing over to sell at the market. In the fall, at harvest time, it rained and rained, and the grain began to rot in the fields.

With the rains came a terrible sickness. There seemed to be no medicine to cure it. In vain did the elders mix potions and tinctures to give to the poor sufferers. What was to be done? The happy village had turned into a sad place indeed.

It was then that the children met together and decided that their only hope was the heartberry, the beautiful berry plant that had made this place such a happy one. Perhaps not all the heartberries had been dug from the forest – were any of them left? All the children who were well enough went together into the forest. At first they could find no strawberry plants at all, but they pressed on deeper and deeper into the forest until at last here and there they came upon the familiar spreading plants. It was too late for berries, of course, and so the children carefully picked a few leaves from each plant as, singing the Heartberry Song, they wandered among the trees.

When they arrived back at the village they set water to brew in a big kettle and brewed tea with the leaves. When it was cool enough they gave a sip to each of the sick people and murmured the words of the Heartberry Song as they did so. By morning everyone was feeling a little better, and by afternoon they were almost well again. What joy there was in the village! The weather cleared and, although the harvest was meagre, still it was enough to feed the people until spring.

As for the children, the next summer they visited the new and secret place where the strawberries grew. They feasted on the berries and held the old ceremonies. They even took some of the sweet fruit back to their parents and grandparents. But never again did they tell where the place of the heartberry is. Only children know that. As soon as a child grows up, then he or she must forget that secret place and make do with the sweet and healing tea that is brewed from the heartberry leaf.