In this poem Elspeth Brown shows a characteristic wry humour, balanced between comedy and threat. I love the bird cage!

Identity Crisis

They phoned to tell me I had lost my identity.

Someone bought a bird cage with my credit card

and transferred ten thousand pounds.

If she had my identity would she cage a bird?

I wonder if she has my sore big toe,

my nearly healed broken arm?

Does she really want to be this old?

So somebody has my identity.

If you see her on the street, my clone,

ask about milk bottles on the table,

ask how many grandchildren she has

and what she is writing in her head.

Ask her what she worries about at night.

Ask her who it is she loves.

My identity is not so easy to take on,

I have a chequered history.

The Finnish poet, Lassi Nummi, died a year ago. His beautiful love poem 'When one of us is gone' is tender, serious and witty.


When One Of Us Is Gone 
(from the Finnish of Lassi Nummi)

When one of us is gone
and the other is grieving
and the dim dawn brings only the watery snuffle
          of a winter’s day
oozing darkness and gloom from early morning
– maybe, maybe we could try
to whisper very quietly
and exchange news
through that curtain, as people call it?
If there is such a thing. And if there is anything behind it.
We’d talk of everyday matters as we do now
when one of us is in the country
or in another town –
someone has written to the newspaper, someone has had a baby,
got divorced, got married, has died,
talked nonsense. That flower we got last Christmas
has begun to behave strangely. The place needs cleaning
but it’s hard to get round to it. And how are the boys?
I don’t know what the other would say – won’t try to imagine.
A question or just a grunt would be enough
as when one of us is half asleep and says
is that so? – really? – keep talking – yes I’m listening,
          I’m just resting my eyes for a bit ...
(Then usually you fall asleep
          no later than mid-way through the next sentence.)
– No doubt it would be against the rules. But if we were
          careful,
and if we whispered quietly so no one could hear us
– perhaps it wouldn’t disturb anyone, over there or on this side,
in these small rooms and those great mansions?
The rain, too, breathes softly as it strokes the earth.
The wind is barely moaning. The branches and curtains are rustling,
the darkness seeps from branch to branch.
The rain in the gutters
is starting to keep up a steady murmur
and surely between all these sounds
our two voices
could slip through, our hushed whisperings.

Somehow I missed this poem by Helen Dunmore, who has been very supportive of my translations. I like the hair-standing-on-end sense of loss, like a dream where you know something is wrong, wrong, wrong...

The Malarkey

Helen Dunmore's National Poetry Competition-winning poem (2010)

Why did you tell them to be quiet

and sit up straight until you came back?

The malarkey would have led you to them.

You go from one parked car to another

and peer through the misted windows

before checking the registration.

Your pocket bulges. You've bought them sweets

but the mist is on the inside of the windows.

How many children are breathing?

The malarkey's over in the back of the car.

The day is over outside the windows.

No street light has come on.

You fed them cockles soused in vinegar,

you took them on the machines.

You looked away just once.

You looked away just once

as you leaned on the chip-shop counter,

and forty years were gone.

You have been telling them for ever

Stop that malarkey in the back there!

Now they have gone and done it.

Is that mist, or water with breath in it?

© Helen Dunmore

 I liked this poem by Martin Bates (poet, and publisher at Whiteadder Press)

Photo opportunity 

I tear up the paper to light the fire 

attending to domestic detail 

and trying to forget the war. 

But a crumpled photo starts in me 

a slow burn. 

The caption says “British soldiers 

stand over the bodies of dead Iraqis 

killed during the assault on Al Faw peninsula”. 

I flatten the picture, turn back a tear. 

The desert looks cold, sordid. 

I see rubble, a discarded blanket, cartridges 

and, beyond, a blockhouse 

of rough cut stone 

a sagging metal bed 

crazy aerials and barbed wire. 

The two soldiers stand at ease 

perhaps summoned for a photo op. 

They look a trifle dusty, our chaps 

but trim enough  

in fashionable camouflage 

designer helmets, goggles 

pouches and weaponry 

posing as it were 

in ango-saxon attitudes 

to peer into a hole 

where two bodies 

lie crunched, shapeless - 

conscripts, most likely 

ordered to crouch in this hole 

point their rifles at the sea - 

not much threat to anyone 

a forlorn hope. 

The agency saves us  

from seeing their faces. 

But what the caption does not mention: 

shoved up from one corner of the hole 

desperately fashioned from rag and stick 

lies a white flag 

ignored. 

This ignorance burns cold in my belly 

as I crouch again to strike the match. 

(23rd March 2003) 

(Note: “forlorn hope” derives from the Dutch verloren hoop = lost troop  

- soldiers cut off from the main force.)