I’ve decided that each month I’ll post a poem from one of the Wayleave pamphlets as a way of extending the profile of the work and keeping the blog varied.

I’ll start with a poem in Pauline Keith’s ‘By the Light of Day’, a pamphlet drawing on the poet’s childhood in the family slaughter-yard. Like the formative experiences they focus on, these poems are unflinching yet full of compassion for fellow creatures.

A Good Ratter

Aye, she were that. Every Year
at Christmas or the New Year’s table
the black cat was remembered.
Not as quick as me, mind.

We was watching the same hole…
My grandfather would pause,
point at the gun-rest on the wall,
look round to check no eye had glazed.

On the third night – full moon – I got it.
She must’ve been there in the shadow.
I shot her paw off with the one same bullet.
Biggest bloody rat I ever saw.

 The story ended there. No one ever asked
what happened to the cat. In early dreams
she lurched alone across the cobblestones,
lay down, licked at her shattered stump

while I searched and gathered bits of fur,
picked up splintered bone, found
pads enough, with claws that caught
the moonlight. She let me mend her.

Year on year, the tale re-trumpeted,
I watched her grow – till she crouched,
black panther, by the big rat’s hole, eyes
fixed on my grandfather. She sprang.

I’ve chosen this particular poem because it’s a strong complete-in-itself story and includes two very vivid characters, the real and immediate patriarch himself and the avenging black cat of the poet’s imagination. I enjoy the collusion between the imagined cat and the child. For me the key word here is ‘mend’, which seems to sum up what the poem’s about – mending, setting things right.

Revisiting it I admired again its naturally unshowy form, the unobtrusive line-breaks which orchestrate the reading, the vivid descriptions and straightforward telling of how the desensitising business of the slaughter-yard dominates the atmosphere at home as well.

If you’re able to get to April Poets on 23rd April at The Storey Auditorium, Lancaster, you’ll have a chance to hear Pauline herself reading from the pamphlet. Further details of this event and the other readers can be found on www.aprilpoets.org.uk  Hope to see some of you there.