one for its becoming. I think
you were starting to turn your head a little,
your eyes looking slightly to the side.
Was this the beginning of leaving?
4. Fit
Fit
Dim light of the tailor shop, small bell calling
him from the back, shelves with their bottles
of buttons, a thimble, dust and thread
of cuttings on the floor.
To make a coat, search
in all the fabric shops from Wynberg
to Town for cotton, linen, wool.
He licks a forefinger to turn a new page
in the small black book with red binding
and, holding a thick stub of pencil, measures
the arm from collarbone to wrist, elbow bent.
At the waist, two fingers go
on the inside of the measuring tape
to allow a give of flesh between
the measure and the fit.
He translates the length and hardness
of the bones, the breath and change
of the human body
into the flat numbers of the pattern.
*
My father loved to see
my mother wear the clothes he made for her.
At the fitting, holding pins at the side
of his mouth, he lifts the coat from its hanger,
seams pressed but not yet finished
with buttons and hem.
She puts it on, turning
the cloth from two dimensions into three.
Always this taking shape around the body,
this translation again of breath into fit.
To watch my mother as she hurried
out of the house on her way to work, the swish
of her dress in the slipstream of her walk,
was to discover a rhythm too fine to see
in the steps themselves. To grasp it fully,
you had to watch her coat as she left.
5. The mirror in the front room
The mirror in the front room
In the front room above the grate
and the slate mantelpiece stands
the huge, gilt-edged mirror,
one hundred and thirty years old, moved
three times, each time losing something
– the flower at the side, the angel on top –
because the ceiling is lower, the walls closer.
If you stand in front of it, you see
cracks as fine as grey hair. In it, things look
like photographs from the fifties,
the tones softer, browner.
You can see the whole room in it.
Unwatched, the old carpet fades in the corner.
On the sideboard, photographs of different generations,
the same shyness, the same eyes.
6. Devil’ s food
Devil’ s food
to Mai
Pay attention to where you walk
– the filtered light through trees,
the kind of moss underfoot,
the roots of trees, moist and quiet,
where the caps of mushrooms crowd.
Learn which mushrooms are perfect, poisonous,
and which, misshapen, brown, are best of all.
Test the give of the flesh
– too soft means they are bitter and useless for eating.
What’s not for eating haunts them all.
Devil’s food, says my aunt.
Use your hands.
Feel for the spiky underside of the head
and the soft stem, thinner than your finger.
Probe for the base, push aside
the giving moss, reach
right down, learn by touch alone
when to pull, when it will yield
and come up whole.
Brush off dirt.
Do not eat
until they are cooked.
They taste of the soft metals of the earth,
themselves, not themselves,
the presence of older things.
7. two sounds on the edge of hearing
two sounds on the edge of hearing
slight flit and rustle
bats loop away at sunset
and come back
after the mosquitoes
two sounds on the edge of hearing
8. Primal scene
Primal
