Then

Alison Brackenbury

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781847771186
• eBook ISBN: 9781847777713
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

In her latest collection, Alison Brackenbury draws on her lifetime's experience of rural England, its people, and its ways. From the lapwings of her childhood Lincolnshire to the recent floods in Gloucestershire and the signs of a changing climate, the poems reach urgently to both past and future. Keenly aware of both the beauty and the harshness of the natural world, Brackenbury reminds us of our own fragility and responsibility.

FLOOD

1
Flood

We are made of water. But we forgot.

For twelve long hours the sky sank down like lead

without a breath of wind. Rain’s rush swept slates.

Offices dripped; you broke for home, instead

of cycling, seemed to swim. Drains gaped like graves,

iron lids askew. Cars breasted tidal waves,

one road, brown flood, one, water spouts. Yet this

was the storm’s lull. Huddled in café’s steam

‘I’ve never seen such floods in thirty years’

travellers gulped down all hopes of reaching home.

As the winds rose, to dry phones’ sweet sea bells

they left for schoolfriends, cousins, hot hotels.

Then came the panic. For the pumps were drowned.

In wastes of water, taps would soon run dry.

Then people fought in queues across the town

as bottled water, glittering, swept by

on rain-soaked pallets, for the rain was sharp

as ice. Cars loaded. Then the shops fell dark.

Your gleaming tap coughed empty to the sink.

Surge reached the Abbey, kissed the dead in graves.

You sat by a few pints you dared not drink.

You wished, like your deep fathers, you had saved.

Yet the Ark held. Washed empty by your day

you let the dark’s flood carry you away.

2
Mitchell

Yes, I can see him. He is just nineteen,

as we were nineteen. Ducking out the bar,

bravo, he lights a cigarette. The gleam

warms his untouched cheeks, as to a mother,

the tender hollows of his collarbone.

Floods murmur everywhere. He tells the others

he knows the field paths, he is walking home.

What do they hear in dark? A branch’s crack,

a child’s cry. ‘I don’t know how to swim.’

They have no lights, no rope to haul on slack,

the hidden stream pulls stronger than a horse.

Dark sweeps him on. Day cannot bring him back.

Ten miles downstream, I hack at storm’s stunned flowers,

brush down one whole but thin-stemmed rose, toss it

into a pail, so I may lose no hours

of its small breaths, honey and apricot.

Buoyed on the loose soft rainwater, it swirls.

Radio’s tides wash over my calm bucket.

‘A body found in Tewkesbury in fields

has not yet been identified.’ But far

in Stroud, in Slad, in Gloucester’s cloud, young girls,

the old men name you, see you as you are

never again. Rose ash falls from your fingers,

the wet door clicks. You walk into the bar.

3
Bowsers

‘Boozer’ writes Confused of Gloucester.

Dazed by screens, I mutter ‘Browser’ –

No. They are bowsers. When I first

glimpsed one squat blue tank, I reversed,

leaned over it, not to ease thirst,

but to admire its taps’ brass shimmer,

hissed and spun, its water’s glitter....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• The Trent rises, 1947
• Bath cubes
• Translated
• The shepherd’s son’s photo-album
• Great-great-
• I.O.W.
• Edith leaves
• Home leave
• Frayed
• Left
• Binder twine
• Ditches
• The lunch box
• Köchel 622
• Suddenly
• After the funeral
• Fruit in February
• On a February night
• Out of the wood
• On guard
• The shed
• At eighty
• Giving way
• Your signature is required
• On the aerial
• Leap year
• Serena speaks of February
• Lapwings
• Victoria Coach Station, 11 p.m.
• St Kilda’s wren
• ‘Song, though, is a uniquely human business’
• To Mr W.S., from his agent
• Too late
• A quiet night
• Leaving Cheltenham
• Late at Long Eaton
• Money
• I want life to be more like poetry
• Glazed over
• Dessert
• May Day, 1972
• The cricket
• Before breakfast
• Bombus
• Asleep
• The second jab
• The Shackleton expedition
• In the Black Country
• The Shaker chair
• Near Russell Square
• November 11th
• The First Emperor
• The Wallace Collection
• Thermal
• Diary of a stretcher bearer
• Stubbs and the horse
• John Wesley’s horse
• Rosie
• Take off
• Harvest
• In an August garden
• At Needlehole
• The nymph considers the garden
• The jobbing welder
• The button factory in Bologna
• The Beatles in Hamburg
• Mentioned in Minnesota
• Getting up
• Wilfred Owen at the Advanced Horse Transport Depot, 1917
• 5 a.m.
• First
• The twenty-ninth of December
• Looking for the cat
• In store
• FLOOD
• No
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Also by Alison Brackenbury from Carcanet Press
• Copyright