Poem 408
A song from The Nightdress … a duet for Constance and her brother William … Constance is serving her twenty year sentence in prison for murder while William is out in the world busy becoming an eminent marine biologist specifically for his research on the Great Barrier Reef … there’s a photo of him using a large flat bowl to closely observe species he’s collected, which is where the title and staging of this song comes from … William helped Constance murder their infant half-brother Saville but Constance took the rap for them both, allowing William to make a life … he has turned to science for understanding of the world but still has been unable to penetrate the mystery of himself, of Constance, of what together they did …
… Constance’s lines are the ones in italics – she sings from where she is trapped and oppressed in Holloway Prison, required to work assembling mosaics for St Paul’s Cathedral … while William studies life in a bowl Constance lives life in a bowl … as opposed to the light and space William is enjoying in Australia, Constance is immured under fortress-like ceilings of stone, the only blue sky she sees is on the chips of painted marble she pieces together … she steels herself to get through her interminable sentence one day at a time …
( I like the list of species – coincidentally the sole from the previous poem makes a reappearance – particularly the dwarf octopi that kill a red-throat emperor (Saville’s throat was cut) and I knew I had to use the wonderful word zooxanthellae when I came across it … )
Life In A Bowl
Coral trout brittle stars damselfish all life existing in a bowl ten thousand species beyond belief here on the reef sea horses sea perch and sole working in the sun wading in the water alone under a wide sky observing and recording what creatures do and why alone under a wide sky One piece then another brightly painted chips of stone they don’t always tell us what we’re working on put one piece beside another slowly the pattern comes together they make the picture will the picture ever be done? Hermaphrodite clams master and mistress venomous dwarf octopi they seem to have stung this little red-throat emperor quivering and shivering he dies Forget about the picture look at life in miniature just this piece just this day look a little square of blue sky Squinting into galaxies observe and classify seeing but a little of what creatures do and why tiny gobies coral polyps zooxanthellae alone under a wide sky This will be laid in the crypt of a great cathedral how many feet will pass across my work? no one will know who placed this piece just so from what hurt what pain this fragment came Darwin goes before me science is the key Forget about the picture look at life in miniature Observation classification Will dispel all mystery Just this piece just this day again a little square of blue sky Wading in the water seeking to make order alone under a wide sky A little square of stone sky I search within myself for a lost sunken key Alone under the stone sky Observation classification will dispel all mystery William William ... But here is a bowl just a little bowl and there is the sea Why don’t you write to me?