Alison Brackenbury
Alison Brackenbury was born in
Lincolnshire in 1953. She now lives in Gloucestershire,
where she has worked for almost twenty years in the
family metal finishing business. Her work has appeared
in over fifty anthologies and has won an Eric Gregory
Award and a Cholmondeley Award. She has recently scripted
three programmes for BBC Radio 3, including ‘Singing
in the Dark’, a celebration of the stubborn
survival of traditional song: ‘Evocative, amusing,
and utterly compelling’, Radio
Times Choice.
Her latest collection is ‘Singing
in the Dark’,
Carcanet, 2008. ‘A quiet lyricism and delight’,
The Guardian, ‘Mellifluous art’,
Poetry Review, ‘Grace and authenticity’,
Poetry London. New poems can be read at her website:
www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk.
Why She Hates Mornings
January’s cabin teeters on the edge,
No wisp of light till seven fifty-six.
The nesting crows do not arrive for sticks.
I inch my way to breakfast down the ledge.
My mind ticks lists: blood sugar high
For him; her chemotherapy
Has stalled. And you? More biopsy.
Say “snowdrop” to the young, they snarl.
Even the bulbs were slow to clear
The soaked dark of their clay this year.
My daughter crashes through the hall,
Swears at the rain, her worn coat, leaves.
A thin sun blinks. The spilt tea shines.
The starlings curse, in song, from eaves.
I want life to be more like poetry
(Pete Doherty)
Poetry will not hold your hand,
drop down her face to kiss you.
Poetry makes no midnight calls
to cry how she will miss you.
Poetry cannot run the street
to check that you are there;
nor close your eyes, then turn, then breathe
lilac on slow air.
The First Emperor
He made the many kingdoms one,
He tore men from the land,
Forced China to one neat small script
No peasant understands.
Clay soldiers crowd to guard his grave,
Good weapons in dead hands.
Did he choke scholars live in pits?
The scholars disagree.
He longed to fight for ever, sipped
Potions of mercury.
Died on the Eastern frontier, as
A hawk falls, suddenly.
His sons were swept away before
The slaughtered clerks turned earth.
Mao praised him. What were borders, weights,
That deadly fine script worth?
Girls ache in factories still to give
Clay soldiers rapid birth.
A peasant scrabbling for a well
Found broken hands, criss-crossed.
Scratches on slips of pots name those
Who slept in the kilns’ dust.
The peasant’s brown face smiles at me.
The Emperor’s face is lost.
Cooling down
How still the night is,
The valerian white
As little moons, the Painted Ladies
Asleep under leaves, June’s moths all gone
To lidless sun. Soon owls will come,
The barn, the tawny, call, re-cross
Dark’s railway lines. Bolt every door,
Each sense sings sharp with loss.
© 2008
Salt Publishing Limited 
