Phoebe Power

Poetry

1. / Rina

   

   

   ENGGBR

   She used to faint, her hair

      flapping beside her, eyes

   spinning back through her head.

          She grew an eating disorder like

   a germ in a test tube, or a baby. 

     Never said what was in her

   soul, but left her pink lips

          prissed forward at us, to guard her. 

   Then she got thinner, till she was a slick

      question mark in a long dress. 

   At every stage, the pattern in her face

      faded more. 

    

   I saw her on the arm

    of a train operator. He was all

   apologies and watches. Eventually

    she drew up a chair at the office herself

   and went to work. She never missed a day. 

      Then a shadow

   drew down behind her eye.

   She woke one Monday, and could not see

       through both her eyes. 

   They said 

     a shadow has drawn down

   behind this eye. 

     I saw her the next week at a party. 

   She didn’t mention it. 

     Her eyes were just as big, 

                           and bare, and blue as I remembered.  

    

2. / Epiphany Night

   

   

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   bells outside my wohnung

   tungatungatungatung!

   men in tall white hats

   make a ring

   hats with paper fringes

   men in long white robes

    

   then the kings

   come by boat

   cross the See

   from dark mountains.

    

   comes the boat

   crossing dark water.

    

   step down drei könige

   in fancy robe and blackface paint

    

   then they come with lanterns

   pointing orange yellow white

   pointing lantern hats then start to

   multiply in all directions, starshapes, 

   lanterns carried everywhere

   bobbing like a lake

    

   then all the handbells stop

   and ring as one

   tungatungatungatungatung!

   behind the See

   washes at our backs

3. / Ice Rink

   

   

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   slippery translucent globe

   lit pink, or blue, or light green.

   cutting through the top

    

   like milk or foil or egg or skin

   and sliding on parallel lines, then

   crisp surface, ridges raised. 

    

   plastic-covered blades. beat: 

   synthetic girl’s voice

   pops around this indoor space. 

    

   friends hold hands; littlies

   shuffle in their spacesuits

   hanging on to penguins;

    

   parents loosely dance behind. 

   this jolly light world

   of flying and seeing;

    

   the jolly bright world

4. / from A Tour of Shrines of Upper Austria

   

   

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   Stop 1: Eck 1

    

   two perspex jars of candles:

   egg pool of wax, yellow flame

   burns through lent, anticipating easter. 

    

   windowbox of deep pink

   primrose, and spiking bulbs

   white, moving up to green. 

    

   behind, the painting: 

   mary gets a crown, ascension. 

   seven stars of straw

   tucked in the top iron frame.   

    

   first I’ll draw,

   then photograph. 

    

   if you wanted you could stay

   till the flame burned down.

    

   I have to kneel 

   inside to take a good picture

5. / from A Tour of Shrines of Upper Austria

   

   

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   Stop 1: Eck 9

    

   this one’s for mothers, 

   all dead and dying mothers.

    

   mary’s in a frame there

   her dress pulled back to show 

   her grey and red heart

   pierced with a knife and lilies. 

    

   jesus too with his bared heart.

   and a monk holding a baby

   on his arm like a father. 

    

   in a frame’s a worried mother

   kissing the hand of a child in bed. 

    

   and a sewn tea-cloth, black thread

   on grey-white linen: 

   Wenn du noch eine Mutter hast, 

   Danke Gott und sei zufrieden, 

   Nicht jeden auf der Erderund

   Ist dieses höhe Glück beschieden.

6. / fasching

   

   

   ENGGBR

   at Elli’s schmankerlstube it’s all

   drinking and bosners. 

    

   in neukirchen it’s ten a.m. and children are dancing in a pen. They’re dalmatians, indianers, cowboys with foamstick horses and goggle eyes. Two headteachers smile and joggle in a pair, her cruella fishnet makeup and his penguin suit, peaked beak. High loud music wrenches in the outdoor light, rips fabric. Dance the children on. 

    

   A multicoloured snake or train of people tooting its bells and flute, curving down the road beneath the green banks and a big sky, the mountains. 

7. / Isis and Marija

   

   

   ENGGBR

   Isis doesn’t like that her name sounds like

   the terrorist group     Isis

   from Colombia speaks Espagñol

   will not 15 cause she will Peter Pan

   the only girl in soft grey sweatpants

   in the art class brushes

   a waveshape, blue-violet-green

   while the other kids draw in pencil first

   a fish, a plant, a boat 

    

   Marija loves Isis; Marija needs friends, she dominates a friendship. Let’s go shopping! Isis is so funny girl. Both don’t speak so good german but are good in english, and understand all

   
    

   *

   Marija: at this school I don’t learn anything! They just give us work and we don’t must do it. In my last school the teacher stand at the front we take notes we learn something. My mother come first from Croatia for one year. Then we all come. I live in a hotel, five minutes. I don’t like live in the hotel because I don’t can see my friends in my house. Isis has next week a party, pyjama party. We play games, talk, maybe go shopping, I don’t know. It’s really good.  

8. / Name

   

   

   ENGGBR

   my grandmother’s name was Chris. 

   ach ja – Christl. 

    

   a chrism, christ with a lemon tongue. 

   turquoise water inside a glass

   wörthersee water

   a crystal you take in your pocket or carry

   touching your neck

    

   a pair of blue and glass eyes

   from a black and white portrait

    

   a ring of yellow hair

   Chris

   in your army green cap

    

   Christl

   a baby lying over a stream

   or the picture of a baby

9. / Es war einmal

   

   

   ENGGBR

   I

    

   A farmer was walking by a stream when he saw a basket had been left there. There was a baby, miraculously, asleep inside. Glücklich für das Kind, the soft, fine day; the slow wind didn’t wake her. 

    

   II

    

   They called her Christl, because she came like Christ in a mean way, out of doors, and was conceived like him, mysteriously. 

    

   III

    

   The farmer had neighbours who, it was well-known, could not have children, and this was a great burden. The farmer’s wife felt that God had laid a gift in her hands, and she was grateful for what she alone had the power to give away.

    

   IV

    

   She was adopted by these neighbours. Then when she was eight, Christl’s first sister was born. Heidi, with hair all over her little skull. Then came Irmgard, Günther, the twins Roswitha and Anne-Marie, and Harry. 

    

   V

    

   At 21 she worked in a canteen in green army uniform, serving meals to British soldiers after the war. First Frank hooked her waist and touched the bright yellow curl that emerged from her cap to rest on her cheek. One night, he stuck his dick in her. The other man came, and he wanted to take her to England and marry her, and Christl had nowhere else to bring the child, and she would not leave it by the river, so she crossed the sea. 

10. / now I’m a bit mad

    

    

    ENGGBR

    now I’m a bit mad at me mam, never adopted me properly, why not? 

    ah that’s what they said, she’ll probably get some more children that’s why she never had me adopted that’s what they said

     

    then afterwards after five years would you believe and she starts having kids then she had six! She was lucky she had me, helping her I mean 

     

    then she had Heidi, then nothing for five years, none for five years after that, 

    then she has Günther, 

    then she has Irmgard, 

    then she has twins!

    then Harry was the youngest

     

    I would have liked to have Werner adopted. They want to sort it out get your papers and everything

     

    because when Hitler came to power and Austria joined up to Germany you had to have papers all of a sudden about this

    aryan thing and that

     

11. / Villach

    

    

    ENGGBR

    Stop 1: Erlendorf 54

    
     

    The Erlendorf house was grey; no-one came to the door. A dark-green, electric-locked gate; thick tape on the mouth of the newspaper tube on the mailbox. Is that a surveillance camera? Small tubular box-eye at us, with its slow, red-dot pulse. 

     

    We cycled asphalt Radwegs by the Autobahn and under heavy bridges, by mineral-green streams and recycling plants. Then down gravel, scuffed paths that cut through trees and dark-green mountains, massive on either side. A clear, turquoise lake; graffiti; warm grassy air; spots of rain. 

    
     

    Stop 2: Ludwig-Walter Straße 20

    
     

    Looking from the side the house was on, under the pink faded church, a car-show called werner. Next to that, a 24-hour casino and a netcafe; on a bus-stop, a women’s underwear advert. Further along, by the crossing, SCHNITZELWELT. 

     

    At the point of the address itself, a dozen new apartment buildings in matte grey, nos 15-25 interchangeable, the handle at 20 a big plastic mitt-shape. 

     

    Werner, my uncle told the address where my grandmother lived to us over the phone; he added it was opposite a church “with two onion domes”. 

12. / Eisblumen

    

    

    ENGGBR

    Ernst was the son of Ernst Konditorei and he had to take up the family business, though he did not like making cakes. He did not want to be inside a small kitchen rolling dough and piping rosettes when he could be in the fresh forest air. He had wanted to be a forester. 

     

    When he retired, his daughters were married and the shop closed. To make up for lost time, he woke at 3am each day and cycled to the hills, where he painted pictures. He had a pole fixed to the back of his bicycle where he taped the wet pictures to dry while he rode home. In winter the water on the pictures froze on the way down, and there were ice-flowers – Eisblumen –  in them. 

     

13. / the weather’s changing

    

    

    ENGGBR

    It used to be ever so hot in Austria, 

    not so hot now, the weather’s changing, it’s like in England. 

    When I came to England first the weather was really

    warm and I thought it’s warm in England nice here not so cold

     

    because it’s frosty in Austria

    you get all flowers you can see out the window

    you couldn’t even see through because of all those ice flowers

     

    get up in the morning freezing

    get dressed straightaway make a fire

    in the kitchen, we used to stay in the kitchen nice and warm there

14. / In and Out of Europe

    

    

    ENGGBR

    In 2016, polling day, 

    I’m swimming in the Traunsee,

    Oberösterreich. 

     

    In 1946, my grandmother came

    to Britain, and spoke kein deutsch

    to her children. 

     

    As a child she swam

    in the Faakersee, Wörthersee,

    River Gail;  

     

    I swam as a child

    in the Eamont, Ullswater;

    Cumbria. 

     

    There’s a Schloss in the town

    I’m living in, named for

    my constituency:

     

    ‘Cumberland, a lake-rich

    county of England’,

    where I vote by proxy. 

15. / I’m not coming to a country

    

    

    ENGGBR

    why did they let us come here then, to torture us! 

    write your travellers’ cheques on this piece of paper

    must have been a reason everyone got married after the war, they supposed to be your enemy

    and put that somewhere separate to your travellers’ cheques

    I didn’t know they were short of housing and they bombed it in 

    so if someone nicks your travellers’ cheques you’ve got this other bit of paper

    I’m not coming to a country they bombed all in, I never would have come

    get them from Thomas Cook

    can’t even get your own place, everybody had to live with somebody

    on the transalpino it’s quite nice, you go all through Europe

    I didn’t come here to be rich or anything, but I expected a home

    and you haven’t seen Europe, so it’s quite enjoyable

     

16. / Austrian pastorals

    

    

    ENGGBR

    i                the lake that’s black in January.

    
    ii               an a.m. running stream,
                      mineral off the Loser mountain.

    
    iii               stepped out the car in Ratten
                       to a high clear air, „Die Post“, tractor.

     

    iv                Wolfsburg, for instance, was a zone of deaf white.

    
    v                  and the Villach canal, sprayed with weed.

    
    vi                 I lived on a hill in Kärnten
                         with piebald goats and barns.

    
    vii                I’d go back to Tyrol’s
                         whistling river,
                         I’d go to Voralberg’s
                         houses made from wooden feathers.

    
    viii               I climbed forests of mountains
                         and came out to insects, flowers,
                         razed trees, cattle.

    
    where I walked the smooth roads
    daily, passing chickens and the ridge
    above the cemetery.

17. / somewhere

    

    

    ENGGBR

    I should’ve married in Austria
               they wouldn’t be here then
    If I hadn’t worked for the English
               I’d be here
    get a nice boy in Austria
               but I’d be somewhere else
    life’s made out for you
               how would you be here
    I don't know how it works
               but be somewhere else?