In Search of Time to Come

There’s not much noise above the sputtering fire.
They don’t speak much.
The children are settling to a private croon,
Though the baby whimpers, palping blindly to clutch
At a breast. Farther back, picked out by a
Final index finger of the sun, someone squats.
They’ll be changing their abode quite soon,
No doubt.
The time requires a tacit finishing touch,
From women working at rough pots
And men scraping a hide to peg it out.

This mood, this life, is like a circle, turning
Always back
On itself: expectation interlocking
Ritual; impulse to novelty, for lack
Of its not yet invented learning,
Subsiding again to things that they take pleasure from.
A hum. A mother’s body rocking,
They are, you would say, at home.

Only the cave mouth, that changeable screen,
Opens a gap
In the circumference; and when the light
Is gone, they have no words by which to trap,
Or the notions by which words could mean,
What that black window’s showing for them to detect,
As they look, perplexed, into the night
And stare,
Then turn towards each other’s bodies to tap
Their comfort. Someone, they suspect,
Is out there; and they’re right. We are out there.

Tammy’s Lover

Outside the window where his eyes are aimed,
Though dreams of Tammy leave them blind with love,
The bees go on as they were made to do,
Losing themselves in budding rose, foxglove.

Something, perhaps, in their mechanical hum,
Perfection of performance without thought,
Might have been food for his, but Tammy’s on
His mind just now, reducing it to nought.

He’s got the place refurbished, spick-and-span.
He’s bought a bedspread for the double bed.
He reads (again!) the postcard Tammy sent
Him and her words have whited out his head.

But at last the day arrives. At last he hears
A longed-for vehicle pull up outside
And rushes out with open arms and cheque
To take possession of his precious bride,

Who, in the bedroom, he unwraps and lifts
Out of her box — a woman made in heaven
(That’s what the label says, a Heaven Products’
Money-back guarantee you can believe in)

Computerized and robotized, oh Tammy,
Articulate for love’s work, Tammy makes
All the right noises of encouragement,
The amenable few movements that love takes.

A cunningly placed on-switch sets in train
The intermittent batting of her eyes,
Her gentle thrust, while pressure activates
Her vocalizing program and she sighs.

What did Garance say? C’est si simple, l’amour?
Yes, love is simple. Child of paradise,
He can’t believe that life offers so much,
And all for such a reasonable price.

Solution sweet. He’s even moved to whisper
Sweet nothings in her ear. His passion seeps
Between her plastic thighs, on which one arm
Lies like a dead weight, moveless, while he sleeps,

Having drifted — though he’s failed to switch her — off;
So as she stirs all night by his dreaming face
Her repertoire of moans says yes to air
And her blind eyes blink their thank-yous at blank space.