We are born to love
Love is a charmed disarray, unbridled joy
My hand explores all your shores
Desire, fire, gain and pain
Love is so short and her memory lingers so long
Because through magical nights like this I held her in my arms
My soul is lost without her
Love and die, don’t ask why.

We are born to laugh
Do not take away the laughter
The sudden wave of joy
When your laughter fills the air
It rises to the sky seeking me
Raising its foamy cascade
It rolls over me like the sea
Tickling my body so I am free.

We are born to be free
Meaningful choices, multiple voices (heteroglossia or just noise)
Diversity and perversity in the city, living a life of universality.
Quiet majestic mountains, clouds hanging completely still
Rivers run in perfect, green peace
In solitary silent fields, looking up at the stars
Someone speaks to me
Be free, be free.

We are born to cry
Lying in my cot with bellyache
Loveless milk, pigsty bottom and a rash like a nettle’s sting
Helpless and small, crying out loud,
I’ll demolish your world
I’ll rule over all
Looking up at strange, deranged faces
In the nursery we learn our graces.

There is nothing to tell
Her memory has been swiped
Meaningless objects and relatives float in front of her eyes
Sounds agitate her
In her last bed, she curls up in defense like a wounded animal.

She had words for the trees at the bottom of the garden, latin words,
the magic quercus robur and the splendid aesculus hippocastanum
She said the huge oak listened to you with intent
And that it stood in contempt of God
To fight a thousand storms in its corner
Nearby, tall apple trees abound
And daffodils, giving nod to their fleeting hours,
Populate the uneven ground in spring.

The horse chestnut with its young shoots of large sticky buds
Opens into large oval-shaped leaves
White flowers form large pyramid spikes of tiny florets
Like some baroque candelabra
Spiky green fruits appear containing shiny brown conkers
Which we would harden in vinegar
I took them to school to win my playground battles
She was there that first day
When, reluctantly and snivelling in my duffle coat,
I joined those strange boys
With tussled hair uniformed in blue corduroys.

She had names but now oblivion has been installed in her brain
Like a snow storm or a television set gone wrong
She had names for the birds
Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Jay
She loved to watch their movements,
Listen to the cadence of their words
And their repetitive renderings of a familiar theme.

She made us understand their cunning nest-craft,
Their courtships and noisy quarrels
She explained about the migratory call
And how companies and legions of birds
Journeyed on light courageous wings
Along our extended southern shores, searching some point of vantage
From where to cross with so frail canvas the grey seas
That toss below and what brave adventurers they all are.

Blind instinct guides these multitudes to old haunts
And sets the interludes of their flight
They have good reasons for the ways they take,
Their eyesight keen for ancient landmarks,
Ways that take advantage of drifts of air they know.

She talked about the joy of watching swallows swoop
And wheel in and out amongst themselves
As they hawked for insects over the river
She described the time she heard a shrill scream
And then saw a flash like a rainbow as a kingfisher passed by,
Marvelling at the brilliant scarlet bill and the orange gullet.

And then there was the time when she heard a frantic squawk
And through the branches fell an ungainly half feathered thing,
A baby heron trying quite ineffectively to use its unformed wings
While its long thin legs were unable to bear its weight.

She had names for the flowers
Her memory and identity have been robbed
And, just as she doesn’t know me, I don’t know her
I watch her slow breathing intensely
I fix this moment in my brain.

The pee and the rose air-freshener momentarily forgotten
She continues to breathe
She sleeps peacefully and I anxiously wait for a sign
Just the rhythmic slow breathing, the rhythm of life,
I step outside to drive home to forget.

I am all the time trying to remember, remember her piano playing,
The flowers she taught me,
The three upright petals and three drooping sepals of irises,
Scented agrimony with its serrated leaves,
Orchids with purple spots, the bright rose-red campions,
Columbines and dog’s mercury.

As her memories flower, life makes footstool use of death.

I’m speechless. Those pills are antidepressants. I am not taking them, because I feel better. Obviously, not because of the pills, but because I thought my anxiety attack had passed, or so it seemed.

No, it hadn’t passed. It was not a mental disorder; it was not a depression. It was a passion. I did not know then, I was only in the midst of pain, but that pain was also knowledge. What I have seen in life has upset me, but it has been worth seeing. That same summer night, with the windows open, my mother made hot dogs and chips for dinner. My mother made very special French fries, I loved them. That day, I did not manage to eat a single one. I was completely fucked. An angel had come to see me, and he would never leave. And time passed very slowly. For those who suffer from depressive disorders, time stands still. It took me a long time to realize that no human being fits into a diagnosis. A diagnosis is a cruel invention of men. I was over-conscious, that was all. I was seeing too many things.

My father didn’t even know what was happening to me. He had enough with his own problems. His and mine, which were the same, which ended up being ours. The angel told me look at how emptiness spreads over everything, look at the summer heat, and look at yourself, look at the trees, the sky, look at me and be afraid. I was afraid of him, yes, for years I was afraid of him, and I never spoke about him, to anyone. I did not speak of the angel of melancholy.

You are paper
You are the cross
A thousand birds have perched and nested in your limbs

You have protected from the rain and provided shade from the sun
The squirrels have played in your branches
You have offered fruits and nuts
A thousand pieces of furniture have decorated our homes
A thousand logs have burnt in the grate keeping us warm at night

You have stretched into the night watching the flight of the owl
The stars sprinkle your leafy head rustling in the wind
Ivy clings to your trunk, its stairway to the light

As a child, I have climbed branches monkeyishly in delight
Run up and down your wooden stairs
And fallen freely to the ground cutting open my flesh

But it never hurt as much as when I saw you fall
To the axe and the saw, a cracking sound like the owl’s screech
Your roots like the hairs of the Gorgon’s head are twisted
A head with its nerve endings laid bare

I am smooth and curvaceous: cold to touch
Hard, very hard
I am old and can be heard at dawn and at night

I long to be taken down to rest
I am shaped like a flower with its stamens of stalk and anther
But do not smell so sweet
My body sweeps down like a long evening dress

What joy and sorrow can be heard
When I roll back and forth
I clamour and clang and turn the human heart to stone
To moan and groan that sorrow of a departed soul

I have swung on the end of a rope for centuries
Born in an iron foundry that has long since gone
My view is spectacular but I cannot see or hear
I can only sound out to mankind the passing of time

Annie stood at the living room window. She’d peed herself. Which was fine. People did that when they were really, really scared. She had noticed it while making the call. Her hands had been shaking badly. They still were. God, that woman, the stuff she’d said to her. She’d punched her. She’d squeezed her arm in a vice-like grip trying to drag her away and force her into the open door of the van. There was a big blue mark on her arm.

Jesus, how could Mark still be out there? But there he was, in those comical shorts, so confident as if in some alternative reality where a skinny weakling could actually win a fight against a maniac with a knife. Wait. He is holding a cricket bat, shouting something down at the woman, who is on her knees, like those blindfolded prisoners in a video shot by ISIS. Mark, don’t, she whispered. For months afterwards she had nightmares in which Mark sent the woman’s head for a six. She was screaming his name from the living room window, but nothing was coming out. He swung the bat round over his head and down. Then the woman had no head.

Sometimes she’d wake up crying from the dream about Mark. The last time, Mum and Dad were quickly there at her bedside, telling her that’s not how it was. Remember, Annie? How did it happen? Say it. Say it out loud.

I ran outside, she said. I shouted.

That’s right, Dad said.

You shouted. Shouted like a real champion.

And what did Mark do? Mum said.

He put down his cricket bat, she said.

That woman was trying to do a very bad thing to you, Dad said.

But it could have been worse. So much worse, but Mark was brave hitting and frightening her with his cricket bat, Mum said.

But because both of you were brave, Dad said, it wasn’t so bad.

You were so good, Mum said.

You are beautiful, Dad said.

I never saw Mark again.

Let us reminisce about the days when we were old enough to know better, yet young enough not to care. We spent our hard-earned money on beers to allay fears that were as unreal as the women we did not talk to. It was liquid courage to get us through our turbulent youth when our brains were toothless and our hearts open. And the only things we have to show for our mistakes are those half-baked, crazy friendships which we return to every year because we fear the loss of dear memories. Our hearts are closed. Rob is no longer here. Now we only have loss and grievous wounds. The mistakes are the lessons we will never forget.