Fleur Adcock: Immigrant

November '63: eight months in London.
I pause on the low bridge to watch the pelicans:
they float swanlike, arching their white necks
over only slightly ruffled bundles of wings,
burying awkward beaks in the lake's water.

I clench cold fists in my Marks and Spencer's jacket
and secretly test my accent once again:
St James's Park; St James's Park; St James's Park.

Fleur Adcock: The Soho Hospital for Woman (IV)

I am out in the supermarket choosing –
this very afternoon, this day –
picking up tomatoes, cheese, bread,

things I want and shall be using
to make myself a meal, while they
eat their stodgy suppers in bed:

Janet with her big freckled breasts,
her prim Scots voice, her one friend,
and never in hospital before,

who came in to have a few tests
and now can’t see where they’ll end;
and Coral by the bed by the door

who whimpered and gasped behind a screen
with nurses to and fro all night
and far too much of the day;

pallid, bewildered, nineteen.
And Mary, who will be all right
but gradually. And Alice, who may.

Whereas I stand almost intact,
giddy with freedom, not with pain.
I lift my light basket, observing

how little I needed in fact;
and move to the checkout, to the rain,
to the lights and the long street curving.

Fleur Adcock: The Video

When Laura was born, Ceri watched.
They all gathered around Mum's bed —
Dad and the midwife and Mum's sister
and Ceri. "Move over a bit," Dad said —
he was trying to focus the camcorder
on Mum's legs and the baby's head.

After she had a little sister,
and Mum had gone back to being thin,
and was twice as busy, Ceri played
the video again and again.
She watched Laura come out, and then,
in reverse, she made her go back in.

Fleur Adcock: For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock: For Heidi With Blue Hair

When you dyed your hair blue
(or, at least ultramarine
for the clipped sides, with a crest
of jet-black spikes on top)
you were sent home from school

because, as the headmistress put it,
although dyed hair was not
specifically forbidden, yours
was, apart from anything else,
not done in the school colours.

Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls
to school from your freedom-loving father:
'She's not a punk in her behaviour;
it's just a style.' (You wiped your eyes,
also not in a school colour.)

'She discussed it with me first -
we checked the rules.' 'And anyway, Dad,
it cost twenty-five dollars.
Tell them it won't wash out -
not even if I wanted to try.

It would have been unfair to mention
your mother's death, but that
shimmered behind the arguments.
The school had nothing else against you;
the teachers twittered and gave in.

Next day your black friend had hers done
in grey, white and flaxen yellow -
the school colours precisely:
an act of solidarity, a witty
tease. The battle was already won.

Fleur Adcock: A Heidi Coi Capelli Blu

Quando ti sei tinta i capelli di blu
(o meglio, oltremare
sui lati rasati, con una cresta
di spuntoni neri in cima)
ti hanno mandato a casa da scuola

perchè, per come l'ha messa la preside,
anche se i capelli tinti non sono
esplicitamente vietati, i tuoi
non erano, comunque,
nei colori della scuola.

Lacrime in cucina,
tuo padre il liberale che telefona a scuola:
"Non è punk dentro, è solo una moda".
(Tu ti sei asciugata gli occhi,
anche quelli non hanno i colori della scuola).

"Prima ne hai parlato con me ...
abbiamo controllato le regole". "E comunque,
papà,
è costato venticinque dollari.
Digli che non viene via
nemmeno se volessi provarci".

Sarebbe stato scorretto ricordare
la morte di tua madre, ma la cosa
balenò dietro le discussioni.
La scuola non aveva nient'altro contro di te;
gli insegnanti ciarlarono e si arresero.

Il giorno dopo la tua amica nera si era
tinta i suoi
di grigio, bianco e giallo pallido
esattamente i colori della scuola:
un atto di solidarietà, una sapiente
presa in giro. La battaglia era già vinta.

Fleur Adcock: Happy Ending

After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies - those
they had willingly displayed - but a frail
endeavour to apologise.

Later, though, drawn together by
a distaste for such 'untidy ends'
they agreed to meet again; whereupon

they giggled, reminisced, held hands
as though what they had made was love -
and not that happier outcome, friends.

Fleur Adcock: Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.