13
Why do some of us leave and others stay?
Why did you stay, sitting tight in the same village
for sixty-odd years, rarely daring to stretch
beyond it and when you did only briefly,
like that tennis ball we had, on elastic,
that flew straight back? Why settle there for life
when you could have broken new ground for yourself?
Was it fear or was it love that made you stick?
The barn, the rookery, the meadow and moors:
once the retinitis pigmentosa
kicked in, this was the world you couldn’t see.
But curlews and lamb-bleats reached your ears
and roses your nostrils and fruit from the garden
your palate (there, I’ve answered my own question).
(Mariscat Press)
In cockney rhyming slang, ‘skin and blister’ equals ‘sister’. And it is Blake Morrison’s sister Gillian, now deceased, who is the subject of this series of poems. The title is doubly apt, the poet tells us in an end note, as their relationship was both intimate and painful. Here we have a single sestina followed by 20 sonnets. The tone is conversational and melancholic, with a very human sense of regret. Morrison’s subtle employment of classical structure and technique allows the raw emotion to shine right through.
