Lucy Hamilton
THE GHOSTS OF CHILDREN
I
Twelve years after my father died I dreamt he was propelling me
along the corridor past his office and into the aromatic fern-house
I searched frantically| tossing aside jade-coloured frames
my mother had shaped into wreaths| tipping terracotta pots
and prising up quarry tiles| splitting my nails and skin
Sitting on a crate in the desolation I saw a brick loosened in the wall
As I reached towards it the room filled with a soft orange light
and my head reeled with scents of jasmine and chrysanthemum
The air became so energised I could hear static
crackling all about me| I unslotted the brick and reaching in
touched something cold and fragile| It was a porcelain book
its white scalloped pages wafer-thin and held with red ribbon
Each leaf revealed a poem illuminated & sealed in cinnabar ink
and painted in calligraphy I knew to be Han in origin
II
Bluetits are jumping about the snow-peppered tree
so focused and self-contained| their feathers lifting in tiny
puffs of yellow blue and grey| each small being absorbed
by tight buds pushing into light| And every session
my Chinese students reach into subtle shades of meaning
in Wordsworth’s sap and fruit and quickening spirit
while the music of their mother-tongue vibrates
with ancient tradition and multiple tiers of perceiving
My mother gives me a Methuen book I can’t remember
ever seeing ― A Chinese Childhood by Chiang Yee
Inside I find my father’s blue-ink longhand but unfamiliar
inscription To Dear Mummy with love from the campers
and recall the photo of my four siblings at Kirkstone Pass
when our mother stayed home with my toddler twin and me
III
So I look up Wordsworth’s ‘Kirkstone Pass’ Green, moss-grown
tower; or hoary tent; tents of a camp that never shall be raised
On which four thousand years have gazed! and remember
a typescript poem by my father unearthed from a dusty box-file
And there the tent luffs and slaps full of the ghosts of children
where they’d scrambled up rocks and plunged into waterfall-pools
This tome he chose for my mother is rich in colour plates
by Chiang who learned from his own father| I copy Plate 8
UP THE LU MOUNTAIN and arrange a visual medley of painting
poems and Chaing’s family tree within a green cutout mount
At fourteen he and his father set off on a five-day pilgrimage
camping as they climbed three thousand feet up Lu Mountain
which was first inhabited by a hermit of the Zhou Dynasty
I imagine an old sage engraving pictograms onto bone & bronze
I
Twelve years after my father died I dreamt he was propelling me
along the corridor past his office and into the aromatic fern-house
I searched frantically| tossing aside jade-coloured frames
my mother had shaped into wreaths| tipping terracotta pots
and prising up quarry tiles| splitting my nails and skin
Sitting on a crate in the desolation I saw a brick loosened in the wall
As I reached towards it the room filled with a soft orange light
and my head reeled with scents of jasmine and chrysanthemum
The air became so energised I could hear static
crackling all about me| I unslotted the brick and reaching in
touched something cold and fragile| It was a porcelain book
its white scalloped pages wafer-thin and held with red ribbon
Each leaf revealed a poem illuminated & sealed in cinnabar ink
and painted in calligraphy I knew to be Han in origin
II
Bluetits are jumping about the snow-peppered tree
so focused and self-contained| their feathers lifting in tiny
puffs of yellow blue and grey| each small being absorbed
by tight buds pushing into light| And every session
my Chinese students reach into subtle shades of meaning
in Wordsworth’s sap and fruit and quickening spirit
while the music of their mother-tongue vibrates
with ancient tradition and multiple tiers of perceiving
My mother gives me a Methuen book I can’t remember
ever seeing ― A Chinese Childhood by Chiang Yee
Inside I find my father’s blue-ink longhand but unfamiliar
inscription To Dear Mummy with love from the campers
and recall the photo of my four siblings at Kirkstone Pass
when our mother stayed home with my toddler twin and me
III
So I look up Wordsworth’s ‘Kirkstone Pass’ Green, moss-grown
tower; or hoary tent; tents of a camp that never shall be raised
On which four thousand years have gazed! and remember
a typescript poem by my father unearthed from a dusty box-file
And there the tent luffs and slaps full of the ghosts of children
where they’d scrambled up rocks and plunged into waterfall-pools
This tome he chose for my mother is rich in colour plates
by Chiang who learned from his own father| I copy Plate 8
UP THE LU MOUNTAIN and arrange a visual medley of painting
poems and Chaing’s family tree within a green cutout mount
At fourteen he and his father set off on a five-day pilgrimage
camping as they climbed three thousand feet up Lu Mountain
which was first inhabited by a hermit of the Zhou Dynasty
I imagine an old sage engraving pictograms onto bone & bronze
LITTLE BUDDHA MEETS THE GIANT BUDDHA
I draw a wide arrow on red card and glue it
on my map pointing south from Chengdu
where I spent my first night in China
towards Xichang| host city of the Festival
I paste the second red arrrow pointing to
Sunny Shuai Ping’s photograph of me lifting
Little Buddha to greet the Giant Buddha which I
cut out with sewing-scissors taking care to include
the painting’s context of rock-face and pines
The third arrow points north towards Leshan
World Heritage Monument| Then I photograph
Little Buddha on my trestle| reduce him to size
and sit him between Giant Buddha’s giant feet
Finally I cut a slot and insert my detached arm
and hand holding up blank-faced Little Buddha
Giant Buddha looks on serene with his vistas
of timelessness| Little Buddha sitting at his feet
with his right side in light and left side in shade
stares out at me with his piercing right eye
and questions in that exacting sphinx-like smile
Copyright © Lucy Hamilton 2019
Lucy Hamilton co-edited Long Poem Magazine from 2008-2018. She works freelance as an editor and MC for Cam Rivers Publishing ― an initiative between the UK and China based at King’s College Cambridge, which has involved her in trips to China, most recently to write travel essays for Fuzhou City Council, Jiangxi Province. Her two Shearsman collections of prose poems are Stalker, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2012, and Of Heads and Hearts in 2018. An article on Chinese migrant workers’ poetry is published in Brittle Star 43, 2018. Translations from the French are forthcoming in Agenda. She has appeared previously in Molly Bloom 7 and 16.
