ON THE SAME PAGE

Side by side in my Encyclopaedia Britannica

3 j’s lean on the edge of my mind.

A japanned urn from Pontypool

stares out of flowered eyes

waving its gilded thalidomide arms.

Frances, a poor Welsh girl,

dipped her brush in golden rancour once.

Now she is a dead irrelevance,

but in 1795 she’s chilblained feet

with an emptiness of mind and stomach,

spreading anonymous skill

over occasional tables

that reverberate with the drawl

of her satined parasites.

Second j on this page is the jardin anglais:

black laurel and bright beech stand back

to show Stour Lake and a far treed hill

above a Graeco-Roman temple

where satined parasites converse

about poems and Pontypool ware

over cups of chocolate and cakes

prepared by quiet magic

in the back of their minds.

‘The japanned urn in your boudoir, Lady Clare,

is magnificent. ’

‘So glad you like it. Try a brandy snap

smothered in clotted cream. ’

And they look out at us over the azaleas.

Third j: to the trumpet’s triumph

and the marimba’s rhythm

Manolo and Rosa dance the jarabe.¹

He throws his sombrero down;

her heels and toes tap round its brim.

Her eyes fix on the hat’s hump,

lash-shielded from Manolo’s gaze

while he struts spur-belling boots.

He is a blaring trumpet, nostrils flaring,

she the ringing marimba,

the steel springs in a soft bed;

she is his balls.

Frances lost her chilblains across the seas, exiled by English greed

to the land of the trumpet-blaring jarabe

 
_____________________________________________

1. Pronounced ha-RAH-bay, it's a Mexican folk dance