Three Poems by Moniza Alvi

The Plum Tree

The tree marked her out as special —
why else would it climb
right up to her window?

The plums were firm and soft
as the flesh of her arms.
She hardly realised it

but she loved the tree. Loved trees,
could identify some of them —
the beech, the ash, even the hornbeam…

When it rained at school camp
so darkly and heavily,
they sheltered and drew trees.

She owned a book for Young Naturalists
British Trees a gift
from her parents, Christmas, 1961.

She wasn’t British, not quite.
Fingernail by fingernail,
limb by limb, slowly

she was becoming more British.
Grandmother, aunts and uncle
lived very far away. They stood

outdoors in the sun in a corner
of West Pakistan, as bright
as a transfer she rubbed on her skin.

The plum tree was laden.
Only the frenzied wasps
loved it as much as she did.

And one day there was no tree,
just a gap by the wall.
It grew too near to the house.

A gap haunted by a tree —
with its roots, branches,
wasps and plums.

My Mother’s Hair

Shock turned my mother’s hair white overnight —
white as a gasp – she wasn’t old, not in her winter.

In Pakistan they asked ‘Why don’t you dye it?’

But she liked her white hair. Perfection is hard
to achieve and here it was. The alchemy of shock.

Contentment — and Happiness

‘My troubles are all over and I am at home; and often before I am
quite awake I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing
with my old friends under the apple-trees.’ Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

Contentment, so I learned,
isn’t the same as happiness.

I wish my mother contentment
even happiness
in her less turbulent final years.

She’s started to paint — glowing
landscapes and seascapes opening up her world.
A pistachio-coloured sea…

Inevitably, there are darker scenes
like her black boat on inky water
under a starless sky —

she seems more detached
from this sombre one which she says
everyone liked.

Often
like the plants on her window-sill
she turns towards the light.

Moniza Alvi's poetry publications include Europa, At the Time of Partition, and Fairoz, all from Bloodaxe.