Work Text:
THE SESTINA OF THE SERPENT’S TOOTH
For Viper’s Point, Drymouth
I gave it the nickname, inspired by children
I glimpsed at the edge of the lake, five
years ago on a sunny point of laughter
as they scrambled from the ground and dusted
the grass from nylon stockings and velvet frocks, teeth
gleaming in fire-balloons that shimmer at dawn.
The love supplied in careful doses, five
drops in every cup, dissolving into milk like dusted
sugar because it was better, finer, dandy and laughs
to sip the love like lapping milk from a saucer, from midnight till dawn.
But now the cup is empty, nothing more than teeth
snagging on porcelain rim, you thankless child.
Blood is not thicker than the surface of the lake, and it dawns
on you too soon, wobbling like a loose tooth
in your mouth – that the silk and dusted
glass-vase in the study is not a room made for children;
and the house you grew up in, curtains golden and a lazy decanter, her five
fingers cupping your chin, is not a home. Laughter
muffled beneath pillows, blankets moon-dusted,
making plans to run for the lake and watch the dawn.
Home is the stillness of the landing, the staircase banister and five
beds in the nursery – but not for the boy who dreamed of laughter
on London streets when the fighter-planes flew by, teeth
bared like a tiger, or the girl who longed for the moon. Lost child.
You were so wanted, so loved, five
million miles across the sky in an airplane at dawn
wouldn’t have kept me away. A mother’s anger is the teeth
of a viper, hissing as she coils around her nest, dusted
eggshells plucked loose, fragile as laughter
held tight like crinkled leaves in her wrinkled hand. Children
would never understand: ungrateful, laughing
brats dashing away to hide-and-seek before you count to five
Yet you were beloved, you brutish creatures, you children
For what is love if not a promise meant to lose, guilt dusted
with innocence, what mothers were born to do since the dawn
of time, a promise meant to lose – a tooth for a tooth?
Now the children have gone. Five places are empty on a table for seven,
and laughter lingers in dusted photographs, sparkling teeth,
as the maid wipes the blood on the floor into an imitation of the dawn.