Three Poems by Greta Stoddart

How I come to clean the windows

So this is how it is:
these endless moments that end so quickly –
how to tend to them all.

See how that wasn’t a question:
I put it to myself as a quest with a very small q.

This is what happens at a certain point:
an easing of ambition (phew) and now just this

queasy nonchalance that comes from all the being
there each morning
to greet the rolling delivery of days.

A spider scuttles across the back of my hand –
whyever do I let it.

Take it to mean that I mean well
when really it is to me as I am to it,
as rain is to the glass.

Poor windows who are so functional and calm,
who keep it all in who keep it all out,
who suffer the endless moments of rain.

Go little spider go!
Make a dash for the place you have in your tiny blue mind

for I have these windows to see to.
They could be so large and bright.

What is a question

if not the beginning of something

and what is a child
if not a beginning

alive and hurtling along towards
another question.

Here comes one now
out of the dark and full of sleep

stepping into the light
but no sooner is it out

and you begin to form
the first words of your response

– have the words even left your mouth –
than the eyes glaze over.

Of course
it was enough to ask the question.

Will you be so good
as to let it stand there

in the wide open
not knowing

will you let it grow
without your need

to tether and train
will you remain just so

and allow it to be
about to become

like a flower begins
to open even though

sunlight is not the answer
only the reason.

Flowers for my ego and a dark stage

with a single beam of light
not on me I hasten to add
but a dream I have
where I’m curled right down
in a corner of the universe
and what’s crowding me out
what’s bearing down on me
while I’m being the only living thing
down there in space
is a vast dark mind
I’m given to understand
over time is mine
and that foetal floating lost thing
no one will ever find
is me who I was
before I came
to play the part
I was born to play
so tell me
who is that
smiling and bowing
in the vast dark hall
wondering where everyone’s gone
and where the fuck are my flowers?

Greta Stoddart’s three books (Anvil, Bloodaxe) have won or been shortlisted for the Geoffrey Faber, Forward, Roehampton and Costa poetry awards. Her latest work, the radio poem Who’s there?, was BBC Pick of the Week and shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. Her fourth book, Fool, will be published by Bloodaxe in September 2022.