Kathleen Jamie

Moon

Last night, when the moon

slipped into my attic room

as an oblong of light,

I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She traveled

with a small valise

of darkness, and the first few stars

returning to the northern sky,

and my room, it seemed,

had missed her. She pretended

an interest in the bookcase

while other objects

stirred, as in a rock pool,

with unexpected life:

strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,

the paper-crowded desk;

the books, too, appeared inclined

to open and confess.

Being sure the moon

harbored some intention,

I waited; watched for an age

her cool gaze shift

first toward a flower sketch

pinned on the far wall

then glide down to recline

along the pinewood floor,

before I’d had enough. Moon,

I said, We’re both scarred now.

Are they quite beyond you,

the simple words of love? Say them.

You are not my mother;

with my mother, I waited unto death.

Source: Poetry (October 2012)

Louise Labé

Long-felt desires, hopes as long as vain--
sad sighs--slow tears accustomed to run sad
into as many rivers as two eyes could add,
pouring like fountains, endless as the rain--
cruelty beyond humanity, a pain
so hard it makes compassionate stars go mad
with pity: these are the first passions I've had.
Do you think love could root in my soul again?
If it arched the great bow back again at me,
licked me again with fire, and stabbed me deep
with the violent worst, as awful as before,
the wounds that cut me everwhere would keep
me shielded, so there would be no place free
for love. It covers me. It can pierce no more.


published in Euvres de Louize Labe Lionnoize 1555.

Blake - A Poison Tree

A Poison Tree 

I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veild the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
William Blake  

Blake is one of my favourite artists - a mystic, a visionary, precise, a wild thinker, a Kipling's cat. I first came across A Poison Tree when I was at school: at seventeen I enjoyed its rhythms, cleverness and glee. But it spoke to me in a different way decades later when I was living a life riven by jealousy, betrayal, anger and despair. And I felt completely powerless.

I hated the corrosive bite of jealousy, hated the weakness, knew I was in the wrong and resented it. My salvation, always but especially then, was art. The colours of my life then were the bilious green of jealousy, the red of passion and anger, the purple of grief for what I had lost, and the black of despair. I put them all into this textile piece, inspired by Blake and by George Eliot who wrote Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love and One of the tortures of jealousy is that it can never turn its eyes away from the thing that pains it.

'Jealousy' is one a few cathartic pieces I made during that spiky time but it is my favourite. Every step of its creation released a different painful aspect of an impossible situation. And while it didn't, couldn't, change that situation it was my shouting into the tempest, my Medusa moment.

Felicity Griffin Clark 'Jealousy' (120x95cm)