After Dominque Hecq and Béatrice Machet #5, ‘L’enfance des mots / the infancy of words’
Interrupting the bread-making
The frost has woken her early
She pads into the freezing kitchen
sniffing the yeasty air
She is discovering for the first time
her father’s secret early morning life
She is almost younger than words
She cannot say to herself
I am intrigued
I am curious
I am awed
can only stroke solemnly
the ears of the knitted rabbit
cradled in her arm
and watch as her father
clapping flour from his grey hands
wrenches open the door of the pot-bellied stove,
prods a roaring orange monster mouth
with a long metal wand
There are nuggets inside, blurred with flame
They flare and settle, the mouth
spits little pellets of grey
onto the hearthstone
like biscuit crumbs, like bread crumbs
She reaches for them, too late
there are loud words in the air
and from that moment
the word No is black and orange and ash,
is the sound of skin sizzling,
is the texure of a fingertip,
puffy for days, and Don’t touch somehow smells
like coking coal and yeast and father, and
forever after curiosity, stubbornness, defiance,
sting like bare feet on a winter mountain morning,
chafe like coarse woolen rabbit
and the frayed pink cord of a dressing gown
tied too tight
a cord which is not umbilical
but is
a species of tether
A conversation in poetry involves a bunch of poets and fellow travellers (e.g. painters, photographers, translators) in an informal conversation taking the form of the work itself; that is, people respond in kind to each other’s creative efforts.
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