DUNMORE, Helen


The Malarkey

Why did you tell them to be quiet

and sit up straight until you came back?

The malarkey would have led you to them.

You go from one parked car to another

and peer through the misted windows

before checking the registration.

Your pocket bulges. You've bought them sweets

but the mist is on the inside of the windows.

How many children are breathing?

The malarkey's over in the back of the car.

The day is over outside the windows.

No street light has come on.

You fed them cockles soused in vinegar,

you took them on the machines.

You looked away just once.

You looked away just once

as you leaned on the chip-shop counter,

and forty years were gone.

You have been telling them for ever

Stop that malarkey in the back there!

Now they have gone and done it.

Is that mist, or water with breath in it?

Diving Girl

She's next to nowhere, feeling no cold

in her white sluther of bubbles.

She comes to a pint like a seal

in his deep dive, she is sleek.

As her nostrils close

she's at home. See how salt water slides

as she opens her eyes.

There is the word naked

but she's not spelled by it.

Look at her skin's steel glint

and the knife of her fins.

With the basking shark

with the minke whale

and the grey seal

she comes up to breathe

ten miles offshore.