Abstract
Mercy in Chatham
If ever a place needed mercy And nuns praying hard for it up the hill Just to keep it alive. Is it worth it? Surely death would be more merciful? We cannot judge. There may be A grain of mercy hidden in there somewhere, Amid the 16-year-olds in handcuffs Being dragged out of McDonald’s, Hookers’ corner in Primark, piles of foamy underwear Tossed to the floor, the thin girls in pink cardigans And black boots on street corners, The crying that goes from pushchair to pushchair All down the precinct, our wail of woe Running along an invisible cord, the cackle That goes likewise from guard to security guard: She’s just passing Boots; got the pushchair with her today. They don’t even have to say how she’s dressed, In jeans, heels and red top; nor how she talks to them: – Frow me out, babes; frow me out then, I ain’t taken nuffin’; you gotta do your job, babes, Just frow me out – edging towards the door. I was at school there; prayed with those nuns, And the answer was, to return again and again, To be forever tied to this last-gasp town; Persistently ill yet does not die. But in the last shop, on a last visit, I ended my karma with Chatham through Mercy. – What a lovely name! I said – I can’t remember Why I asked, maybe thanking her, not even For selling me a Japanese tea set for 50p but For being, for standing there, so serene. – My name is Mercy, she said, and smiled, Amid the fusty clothes and other airless junk We sell to help the homeless. And now my tea set reminds me of Mercy, Who wrapped it in newspaper so carefully, Hand-painted bone china, orange-gold, Black feathers of trees, cherry blossom, The pagoda piled up in delicate slats. A nunc dimittis of a gift, Pulled from the jumble box at the front, A gift to be accepted with grace, not paid for, Though I offered Mercy more money, uncomprehending; A surprise that sprang the giver’s joy, A gift that asked for forgiveness For having had to know the place, All it had inflicted of poverty of spirit, That now blessed me and told me I was free to go And never return again. What a mercy. Even if Mercy has to stay behind. © Fiona Vigo Marshall
The woman and the lobster
She bought the lobster because it reminded her of Canada Where she had never been, of grey-lashed rocks, Wild boats tilting amid the spray, the hard-crusted Spider crawling and snapping with its outsize claw. She approached the cliffs of an unknown shore. She fancied she was going to taste the salt of a foreign land, Strange seas. She did not think of the lobster strapped up, Zipped into a small, black body bag, the growing quiescence As it froze in the ship’s hold. Now sold in the supermarket, A heavy plastic tube with its picture on the outside, All whiskered and fancy red. For some months it skulked In her freezer, a vast, cold bed she dare not look beneath. One day she took it out, till water beaded the outside And it bulged soft and rocky to her grasp, Slit the bag open. Out it slid, orange, stark, in the grey sink, Some last slivers and splinters of Canadian ice. So ancient, So many parts, so multitudinous, the thought of cracking it open, Impossible, like dismembering Satan himself, in all his wicked Complexity of being. Stalked eyes black pins, twirled antennae That seemed to sense her. The red beast shifted, a pincer moved; Just water drooling beneath the shell, but to her, As if indeed it held the secret to eternal life, Old, burnished rock, crustacean that never can be killed; Immortal. But, snatching at her courage, snatching a plastic bag, Greatly daring, she scooped it up. Not waiting to see If it was alive or dead, she ran, bag of dripping lobster In her hand, to the park, the bin. There she flung it, Ran home, bleached the sink clean of all marine Tinges. Listened out for the scuttle of claws On the wood floor, the scrape of returning carapace. In the bin, five pairs of legs settled and sagged. © Fiona Vigo Marshall