Donald Adamson Poetry Blog

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