We used to sing the Beatles together in your pokey student flat on Caledonian Road.
The rat poison on the landing and a barber's shop below.
You tested me in History and Geog for my 'O' Levels. You were studying Social Anthropology, which had something to do with tribes ( the extent of my knowledge).
You had a Greek boyfriend who was a good bit older called Kyriakos and we spent what seemed hours peeling prawns for a feast he never savoured.
Instead, we went to the pictures. I liked him because he was jolly and reminded me of Spiro from 'My Family and Other Animals'.
We have to make sure you get a wheelchair.
Walking is becoming increasingly difficult, even a simple movement from one aspect of Oriel Lliw, where your paintings are exhibited, to another.
If you pull yourself up straight your hips hurt so much the pain ensures you're distorted again.
They've moved you onto the ground floor and you are disorientated. Less light for your art.
As we take you out, my brother and I, you insist on taking the lift.
We'd have to take a lift to the sky, just as you did when you went skinny-dipping off Gower.
Though you were turning blue with hypothermia, the last thing you wanted was a rescue helicopter ( summoned by your panicking lover).
You were winched up unceremoniously.
A better tale ( just as true) was when you were out again skinny-dipping and this time hopped into a yacht, only for the sailors to invite you for a game of cards!
It all goes back to that one tragic day climbing in Israel.
You were working on a kibbutz after finishing Uni, clambering barefoot on a mountain when you fell, fractured your skull and was saved in a hospital in Haifa.
My brother flew out for you, not our parents.
My mother never protected you from my father.
You kept a knife under your pillow for good reasons.
When he visited you at Uni I had to be there ( I didn't know why at the time).
Like my brother and I, you sought an alternative family, your great friend's ( her cello to your violin).
And still she'll call in, without arranging, to that room where you live.
You listen to the music you once played together : Bach and Beethoven.
We sang 'Fool on the Hill' -
' Day after day
Alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin.....'
.....where you live now is on a hill.
Most residents do not smile or grin but stare emptily or repeat constantly the same words or motions.
You always have a painting in your vision, but it's becoming more arduous day by day : your hips are chalk grinding to dust which thickens underfoot.
Letters written in it soon turn to ghosts.
I listen to Thea Gilmore's remarkable album 'Don't Stop Singing' ( her music to Sandy Denny's lyrics) and realise connections.
MY SISTER & SANDY DENNY
I'm thinking of Sandy Denny
kept inside and writing 'Frozen Time',
separated from her one child
in a hospital of woes ;
the cravings and shivering,
Georgia's name spoken time and again
prayers without answers.
I'm thinking of my sister
not locked up but protected
from herself : naked wanderings
at night on Swansea streets,
flinging her canvases out
with the weekly collection.
Her spine now a question-mark,
stooped body lopsided,
fingers strapped from a fall,
she's sketching and painting,
one good eye fleeting
as the light in her room.
Sandy's words are sculpted
in a worn-out armchair :
sharp yearnings, child's cries
she hears in her dreams.
My sister dreams of a rescue
too far from Gower,
blue self raised to a helicopter ;
she paints a mermaid
but it looks like a skeleton.
The rat poison on the landing and a barber's shop below.
You tested me in History and Geog for my 'O' Levels. You were studying Social Anthropology, which had something to do with tribes ( the extent of my knowledge).
You had a Greek boyfriend who was a good bit older called Kyriakos and we spent what seemed hours peeling prawns for a feast he never savoured.
Instead, we went to the pictures. I liked him because he was jolly and reminded me of Spiro from 'My Family and Other Animals'.
We have to make sure you get a wheelchair.
Walking is becoming increasingly difficult, even a simple movement from one aspect of Oriel Lliw, where your paintings are exhibited, to another.
If you pull yourself up straight your hips hurt so much the pain ensures you're distorted again.
They've moved you onto the ground floor and you are disorientated. Less light for your art.
As we take you out, my brother and I, you insist on taking the lift.
We'd have to take a lift to the sky, just as you did when you went skinny-dipping off Gower.
Though you were turning blue with hypothermia, the last thing you wanted was a rescue helicopter ( summoned by your panicking lover).
You were winched up unceremoniously.
A better tale ( just as true) was when you were out again skinny-dipping and this time hopped into a yacht, only for the sailors to invite you for a game of cards!
It all goes back to that one tragic day climbing in Israel.
You were working on a kibbutz after finishing Uni, clambering barefoot on a mountain when you fell, fractured your skull and was saved in a hospital in Haifa.
My brother flew out for you, not our parents.
My mother never protected you from my father.
You kept a knife under your pillow for good reasons.
When he visited you at Uni I had to be there ( I didn't know why at the time).
Like my brother and I, you sought an alternative family, your great friend's ( her cello to your violin).
And still she'll call in, without arranging, to that room where you live.
You listen to the music you once played together : Bach and Beethoven.
We sang 'Fool on the Hill' -
' Day after day
Alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin.....'
.....where you live now is on a hill.
Most residents do not smile or grin but stare emptily or repeat constantly the same words or motions.
You always have a painting in your vision, but it's becoming more arduous day by day : your hips are chalk grinding to dust which thickens underfoot.
Letters written in it soon turn to ghosts.
I listen to Thea Gilmore's remarkable album 'Don't Stop Singing' ( her music to Sandy Denny's lyrics) and realise connections.
MY SISTER & SANDY DENNY
I'm thinking of Sandy Denny
kept inside and writing 'Frozen Time',
separated from her one child
in a hospital of woes ;
the cravings and shivering,
Georgia's name spoken time and again
prayers without answers.
I'm thinking of my sister
not locked up but protected
from herself : naked wanderings
at night on Swansea streets,
flinging her canvases out
with the weekly collection.
Her spine now a question-mark,
stooped body lopsided,
fingers strapped from a fall,
she's sketching and painting,
one good eye fleeting
as the light in her room.
Sandy's words are sculpted
in a worn-out armchair :
sharp yearnings, child's cries
she hears in her dreams.
My sister dreams of a rescue
too far from Gower,
blue self raised to a helicopter ;
she paints a mermaid
but it looks like a skeleton.
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