Poetry Bus: The Poem

I Shall Give You

The great dog was a good gift for twelve years life
Though he did not arrive the actual day
But somewhat premature, and precarious
On beanpole limbs, but his plate paws
Reassured that he was, indeed, the good seed
Of great dogs who had hunted alongside kings
In bog lands where brave men bested fell giants.
This was after I had broken my first leg,
The nine months standing on the train I endured,
And it was after I had kissed my first boy
On the holiday I had broken my first leg.
At last I had before me, touching distance,
My great dog, though he wobbled and vomited
On our drive after the long drive across the water
After being terrorised by the black dog
That was my father’s dog, whose rightful place
He had usurped in the back of the strawed cattle truck.
I thought he was broken, or the runt
And toyed rejection, but because he was mine
For the first time and I had wanted him for so long,
I had wanted him to just this conformation,
I took him, fed him minced meat, one egg a day
And milk. I did not overwalk him
As he grew, as he grew, as he grew.
I came to love him for he was more mine
Than anyone’s and ran to my pursed lips alone.
At a year he could take down a horse
Should we choose, though we did not,
And we had no fear of any living thing
Even after dark. The big house had not long been built
And my mother, who did not want common things
Desired irises to put in the water
Of the pool beyond the kitchen’s bullseyed window,
But not blue ones, for blue ones were common things.
I had seen yellow irises from the woods
The great dog and I ranged and hunted within,
The woods where the wild creatures hid
Stock still at our imagined stealth, yet the dog
Though a sighthound, could still smell and I could flush.
We found that most creatures do scream
When they are dying. The yellow irises
Were far beyond the untended trespassed woods,
Beyond the straggler trees, beyond the iron gates
Where the formal garden of the rich woman
Was laid out to lawn splendour, interrupted
Only by specimens and a formal lake.
She was rich because her grandfather made his fortune
In cheap groceries, and she had never married,
Though she was old now, preferring, they said, to retain
The name that was still lettered above the shops.
We were grave thieves and her wealth no match for us.
The dog would kill on command, I bad him stay
At the point where coarse seedheaded grass
Became short and smooth and grass greener.
I walked slowly, for I had no fear
In plain sight to the edge of her lake
Then walked straight in, and the bottom was yielding
To my hard feet and the world was very bright
Under a high sun. The irises were stretched upwards
Taller than I had thought. I reached, held and pulled
Three stems, my eyes on the half-timbered manor
Where a rich woman was watching my brazenness.
It was a wrench but the root fractured
With a rifle crack and I felt the dog rise
At the single sound on the still long day
And looked to him, and he obeyed me.
I left the garden more slowly than I had entered
Waving three great yellow flags on stalks as tall
As I, with a brown root anchor dry, gashed white
At the place I had torn it from the original.
I carried the good gift home that hot day, through deep woods
And desert fields, while the great dog showed teeth and tongue
And thought of water in his panting.
We gave the yellow irises to my mother,
Planted them in a silver metal basket
In the shallows of the pool beyond the bullseyed window.
They flourished year on year and they flower yet.
My father told tales of our daring
To the men at market that year and the one after.