Mairy's Ditch

MAIRY’S DITCH

“Always strike a woman in her face,” my father’s drunken litany.

My shy scrutiny from the wreckage of our kitchen table
as he performs the practised slapstick of tender punches and clumsy clouts;
lessons quickly grasped from the tethered look in my mother’s bruised eyes,
the lukewarm kisses from her broken lips,
my teeth a vampire’s gag away from tasting blood.

Mairy was no better;
as vain as they come.
She could not bear them knowing her man hit her,
or have them think she gave him cause to.

Many a night my daggers-drawn look,
foreplay to those same old accusations
bandied time and time again;
her nervy smile a whiplash to my shoulders, a barb to my belly.

Other nights had held a sky full of stars
and the huge fires we lit sent sparks racing like released birds
set on joining some celestial migration.
Next to mine her slender brown legs and narrow hips,
more boy than woman.
Ribs rippling under her skin, a riptide of anticipation,
breasts hardly there, hair smelling of meadow,
my flesh relishing her every move.

Had some other man captured her heart
I could never have borne the thought
of some other lips smeared on hers tasting of blackberry,
of some other fingers tracing the bitter sweat across her brow
after a day with the horses,
some other hands pressed to her throat perhaps, flexed with anger,
some other man discovering for himself
her most secret parts;
her silver-tongued laugh,
her warm-cat-smell on the days she bled.

This way is easier for us both.
A gentle laid to ground forever sleep
in this bramble nest trap of a ditch.
An undrowned ophelia, untainted, unfurrowed, untrammelled,
her bridal bed a mantle of frost-bleached grass and trampled bracken.

She lies less than two feet away from me but I can no longer reach…..

I am too late to weave grass back into frozen soil,
coax the fallen leaves back into bud,
unblade the blade or staunch her bloated sunset.
If I could put the breath back into her breast,
the mirror back into her eyes,
pulse to her throat…..

Branch shadows cast by the moon
drag their talons across her pale skin but she remains unscathed.
Nothing can harm her.
I am her protector.

Kneeling at the edge of Eden
I can still see the shiny, brown rim of the top of her left ear.
The wrinkle across her forehead like a scar of lightning.
The frayed green ribbon knotted in her dark hair.
The collar of her blouse turned up
and the hole where the sleeve is unravelling at the armpit.
The swell of her thighs and bottom,
and her right knee folded beneath where she fell.
One shoe off to one side.
Her legs bare and beaded with blood from the thorns.
The chipped nails of the toes on her bare foot;
a footprint of dust on its sole.

Someone else may find us here
in time;
a fox maybe,
or a farmer’s boy tying up his father’s hedges.

H

That took my breath away...

That is an amazing read, so dark, so full of love/hate, I am going to have to read it many times over to get the fullness of it, but at first reading, it is very unsettling, unnerving, troubling. Fantastic piece of work - thanks.

god I hate violent men and this portrayal makes out like he has some sort of heart justification for what he does. Its awfully brutal and i never want to read it again, which probably means you're definitely good at what you write!

@Skia - thanks for your breathless response (gasp)

@daf - I'm pleased you saw there is love lurking somewhere behind the hatred.....

@Delta - thanks also for your comment - I hate violence as well, particularly when perpetrated by men against women (whether physical, verbal or mental) so rest assured this is not intended to condone it.....
but it was written to provoke a response and it seems to have succeeded.

Human beings are strange, odd, perverse things aren't they .....we. Nicely illustrated.

Exactly daf, and unfortunately it's about 20% nature / 80% nurture.

Without doubt. Most cowardly thing a man can do is deliberately hurt a woman. Hate and detest it.

This is a brave and troubling poem, hill. It delves deep into the complex emotions of love and hate, both sides of the same coin of passion. If I have a criticism, it is that it is overly long. I feel the the excess of detail becomes confusing. There is a suggestion that both the narrator and his victim lie in the ditch together, both dead, yet the narrator's demise is not mentioned directly, merely suggested. there is also contradiction in that you start by saying that the brambles don't mar her and then later you describe how she is scratched by them:

"Her legs bare and beaded with blood from the thorns..." I would also point out that the dead do not bleed, or are you making reference to the medieval supersticious belief that the wounds of the dead open and gush at the touch of the victim's murderer?

I reiterate that it's a good poem and the imagery and language are strong, but I would recomend a review and a bit of an edit.

Best, H

@Hawk - thanks for your detailed reading and analysis.
This started as a short story - but transformed itself into a poem when I decided to see how prosaic I could be and get away with it..... hence its length and perhaps confusing timeframes (also perhaps the reason why editing this down any further is probably necessary at some stage).

The blood on her legs is indeed from the brambles (through which she was dragged prior to being stabbed to death) - it is the talons of the branches' shadows that now leave her unscathed.

The narrator's fate? - originally he was allowed to live and get away with the murder, but I felt having him taking his own life as he feels remorse for what he has done might be a more fitting conclusion (given the ambivalence of his feelings). However, I chose to hide the fact that he dies until the final stanza where it becomes evident they both lie in the same ditch.

Thanks again, H

Hill
this felt unflinching, intimate and brutal. I too felt a bit confused over the fate of the narrator, I had to make a quick switch in understanding at the end, but still didnt grasp his suicide through regret. As for whether that matters, I have no idea as it seems to me the best writing all fits somewhere in between spelling it out and leaving the reader clueless.

I thoroughly enjoyed it Hill.

Thanks Jerry, since his fate also took me by surprise whilst writing it perhaps that explains the ambiguity.....

Know what you mean Hill, sometimes these characters take on a life (or death) of their own.

I couldn't write more than that,
It shows how brutal human nature can be, Yet somehow how passionate and warming..

Loved It that much, (I hope you don't mind) But I saved it on my computer and hope to show my fellow Pupils in my English Literature Class at college.

Only with your permission of course,
We love to spend hours analysing work like this :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skia

hope to show my fellow Pupils in my English Literature Class at college.

---

Of course, you are welcome to show it around - I would be interested to learn what they make of it!

:eek2:

H

Thank You - I'll make sure I let you know !

:)

I wonder what it cost you to write this - let alone to have experienced the events. I've read it only the once so far. As at least one other responder noted it deserves and requires a 2nd, 3rd reading. It's an astonishing work, not merely on its literary merits but in its deep, deep humanity.

Thank you Prince - the cost was purely the exploration of the darker fringes of my imagination - for the sake of art (ahem!) rather than any biographical fall-out, rest assured. I hope that admission does not devalue the piece!
And thank you for your generous response as ever.

H

Among the many things I might have singled out is how appropriate those final three lines are: seemingly so affectless, at first glance so anti-climactic, but on second reading it expresses so well how morally spent the narrator is.

It won't surprise you to learn I'm rather with Hawkman on this one, in finding the poem, while striking and powerful, too long and a bit confusing.

It perhaps would have been better as a short story; it works as a narrative poem, but I just don't see why all the skipping around in the first few stanzas is useful. It certainly doesn't create any pace, and I think that's a problem as the dramatic tension you could gain to the benefit of the poem is non-existent.

I wonder if you're putting too much emphasis on hoping the poem works in dealing with gruesome subject matter at the expense of any consideration of the form of poetry that could be employed to work with this?

Anyway, it's still a challenging piece of writing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blank|verse

It won't surprise you to learn I'm rather with Hawkman on this one, in finding the poem, while striking and powerful, too long and a bit confusing

---

Not at all b|v - it's an experiment that perhaps got lost in translation between prose and poetry. I accept it needs a comprehensive rethink as far as pace and format are concerned.

H