Birsay Publishers

Glower, Birsay, Orkney, KW17 2ND, Scotland

email: contact@biscott.co.uk
Copyright Biljana Scott 2007
The right of Biljana Scott to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9557214-0-3
Photographs by Biljana Scott.
Cover Design and typeset in Perpetua 12pt by Jelena Jakovljevic.
Design of the lettering on Adelinas gravestone, featured on the cover,
by Martin Jennings.
Printed and bound in Malta by Poultons Press.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Anton, with equal love

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Yasmeen Ariff for her sustaining
friendship and her invaluable help in turning a draft into a
book; Jelena Jakovljevic for her inspired design work and
type setting; Brendan Fleming for his invaluable help in
attending to the details; and Martin Jennings who designed
and carved the lettering on Adelina's gravestone which
figures, with its whirlpool-cum-galaxy, on the book cover
(www.martinjennings.com). To all of these, as well as to MC
Tuffery, Farsi Moussavi and Rebecca Posner, I am grateful for your
'making a difference.'
I would also like to thank Bernard ODonoghue for his
kindness and encouragement, and for publishing Not till
you died did I understand that in the Oxford Magazine
(No. 263, Trinity Term 2007).

Contents
Foreword
Heavens Wicket
Exiled from my Future
Weir Wake
Reversals
On Lighting Two Candles in Church
Souls in Transit
Sonnet Corona
Then and Now
Insomniacs
Untold Knowledge
Trophies
When Words Fail
Time and Tide
Villanelle
Hope
On Swimming Butterfly
The Last Word
Wei Ming
Extract from Adelinas travel journal
Facsimile of Adelinas Yearbook Entry
Text of Adelinas Yearbook Entry

6
8
11
29
30
31
32
33
47
48
49
50
52
55
58
59
62
66
67
69
72
73

Foreword
This collection of poems is a memorial to my daughter, Adelina,
published in honour of what would have been her 21st birthday
on the tenth of the tenth 2007. Since it is not given to me to
relinquish the protective hold of parenthood and celebrate her
coming of age, this book figuratively relinquishes the tight
clutch of grief borne these last two years and launches something
of Adelina into the world.
The book begins with a self-portrait I wrote a few months
after she died of drowning in a Swiss mountain torrent. The
poems themselves were written in the interval between the
first and second anniversary of her death and appear, in
retrospect (and rather to my surprise, for I had put the portrait
out of my mind), to be an exploration and reworking in verse
of many of the issues which were first outlined there. This
venture into writing poetry marks a new departure: I had,
twelve years previously, given up a first brief foray into the
practice as too compelling a distraction from work and family.
Two extracts from Adelinas travel journal are included at the
end, as is her Oxford High School 2005 yearbook entry. These
provide a moving record of her own voice: her exuberant joie
de vivre, her determination to seize the day, her love of literature
and her unlaboured erudition. Canonical authors and mythological heroes figured in her everyday chatter as if they were
family members or classmates, and shed borrow and adapt
their words as she might the contents of a friends gym kit.
Adelinas writings also contain a rich seam of tragic irony. The
introductory section of her travel journal includes the words
it is worth mentioning that at the time of writing this, the
author knows no more than the characters as to what turns
6

this story is to take, nor in which city they may end, a

discrepancy in knowledge which she refers to as a pleasant
and rare experience.
Tragic irony is also poignantly present in the very last sentence
she wrote: All ended in tragedy, however. She goes on to
recount having been warned by the police not to paddle her
feet in the torrent, a warning which she dismissed by asking:
what is gefhrlich? (danger in German and, aptly,
adventurousness too).
The fun-loving, risk-taking and adventure-seeking spirit of
gap-year travellers, which Adelina so epitomised, has led them
to be dubbed the invincibles. In spirit yes. My hope, by
including these extracts, is that Adelinas voice will speak
directly to like-minded invincibles, those intrepid young
adventurers whose brinkmanship I heartily admire. Yet I also
hope that the turn her particular story happened to take will
provide a reminder of the danger present in interpreting all
warnings as an invitation to defiance.
Foolhardiness or fate? I believe that chance played a definitive
hand in Adelinas death. Dipping ones toe in a river in no way
deserves death. Nor does enthusiasm deserve discouragement.
It is a tragic misfortune that Adelina, who so loved life and
had so very much to offer and live for, should have died so
avoidably. The same holds for her heroic friend, Brendan
Killoran, who jumped in to save Adelina and lost his life in this
ultimate act of chivalry.
A memorial is as much an expression of gratitude as it is an
act of remembrance. In addition to my boundless gratitude to
my daughter, I would like to express my thanks to my friends
and family. I hope this book will act not only as a reminder of
Adelina, but also as a testament to the ascendancy of love,
yours included.
Biljana Scott, August 2007
7

Heavens Wicket

i.m. Adelina Scott Lin and Brendan BJ Killoran

Whenever an inlet floods the imagination
specular worlds surface and submerge
somewhere just beyond our reach.
Wonderland, Narnia, Middle Earth, Lyras Oxford,
Where do we go from here?
A barely perceptible aperture crouches
between one world and the next:
Heavens wicket.
What act of God propelled you through
the currents furious maw?
When you slipped then fell into
a moments inattention
youd never been happier, love and joy
surging like a mountain stream bursting its banks.
A dip of the toe your favoured farewell then this!
You screamed as the snowmelt swept you past
the young man. He did too! Bless him,
his own father had died of accidental drowning.
So, selflessly, he plunged in to rescue you.
Ten minutes turned eternity
Oh, the terror of that torrent!
Is this Kismets dividing line?

- Irreversibility -

This is Kismets dividing line.

Oh, the terror of that torrent
(ten minutes turned eternity)
he plunged into so selflessly to rescue you!
His own father had died of accidental drowning.
The young man (he died too, bless him),
screamed as the snowmelt swept you both past.
From a dip of the toe your favoured farewell into this
surging mountain stream bursting its banks.
Youd never been happier, my love and joy
a moments inattention
then you slipped and fell into
the currents furious maw!
What act of God propelled you through
Heavens wicket?
Between one world and the next,
a barely perceptible aperture crouches.
Where do we go from here:
Wonderland, Narnia, Middle Earth, Lyras Oxford
somewhere Just? Beyond our reach,
specular worlds surface and submerge
whenever an inlet floods the imagination.

Exiled from my Future

(Self-portrait written for the Oxford Muse in December 2005)1

My 18 year old daughter Adelina died of drowning on 27
July 2005 when she fell into a mountain torrent. A young
Irish-Canadian, Brendan Killoran, also died when he jumped
in to her rescue. Witnesses saw and heard the two terrified
souls screaming for help but could do nothing for them
since the river in Zermatt, swollen by summer snowmelt,
is a death channel from which there is no escape. On the
night of their death, the rate of flow was an exceptional 27
cubic metres per second.
This Oxford Muse portrait, written at the end of 2005,
attempts to evaluate the impact of my daughters death by
referring back to the self-portrait I had written at the start
of the year, on the pristine side of this irreparable fracture.2
Many sympathetic friends have said that they cannot imagine
what it must be like to lose ones child. We all, as parents,
live in dread of such a tragedy, yet despite this shadowplay
of potential loss the reality doesnt compare with anything
we might have anticipated. Imagination is both worse and
1 The Oxford Muse: www.oxfordmuse.com. This self-portrait can be found

on: http://www.oxfordmuse.com/selfportrait/portrait117.html.
The January 2005 portrait has also been published online:
Bi Scott Under the Winter Snow the Spring Grass Grows,
http://www.oxfordmuse.com/selfportrait/portrait67.html,
as well as in The Oxford Muse Guide to an Unknown University, eds Theodore
Zeldin and Roman Krznaric (Oxford: The Oxford Muse, 2006), pp.
112-120.

11

better than reality. Worse because in accentuating the horror

involved, it overlooks the buoyant joy of a life and love
shared and still retained in memory. But it is also better in
so far as imagination, unlike reality, has an off-switch,
whereas my daughters absence has turned itself into an
inescapable and sometimes searing presence.
Perhaps, paradoxically, where imagination falls furthest from
reality is that it represents an attempt at understanding, yet
understanding is precisely what is lacking: at the core of this
experience of loss is a bewildering incomprehension. I can
run through the whys and wherefores of my daughters
death interminably and yet still suffer from a fundamental
failure of comprehension.
Faith and a belief in fate would be helpful, but unfortunately
they dont speak to me. Poetry sometimes does, perhaps
because it offers a more creative and celebratory response
to loss than fatalism, and a more personalised one than
religion allows for.
The first (and so far only) poem I have written in memory
of Adelina and Brendan, Heavens Wicket, is an attempt
to come to grips not only with the last moments of their
lives, but also with the one indelible certainty of this terrible
affair the irreversibility of their death. The specular3 form
of the poem, a form Ive only just discovered but feel Ive
been primed for by my interest in reflections, gave me the
chance to tackle several deep-felt concerns simultaneously.
3 See Julia Copus, The Backseat of my Mothers Car, in Staying Alive:

real poems for unreal times, ed. Neil Astley (Northumberland: Bloodaxe,
2002), p.202.

12

The repetition of sentences turns over and over the abject

terror those two young people must have experienced as
they realised they were about to die, something it is hard
not to obsess about
The mirror image allowed me to explode my wishful thinking
that there might be any chance of retracing ones steps from
the dividing line. Even though the sentences more or less
manage to double back on themselves, the meaning does
not. It is carried relentlessly forward, much as Adelina and
Brendan were swept relentlessly onward to their deaths,
and just as those of us whose lives have been fractured are
also inevitably carried forward even though it may feel, as
in my case, that the best part of me stopped dead when my
daughter died.
Another pressing concern was that the English newspapers
had focused on Adelina to the exclusion of Brendan Killoran,
whom they referred to as a young man known only as
Brandon. I was anxious to mention Brendan by his full
name, and to try to shift the perspective in order to include
both their stories.When his father died of drowning, Brendan
apparently felt guilty because he had promised to teach him
to swim but never got round to it. This background throws
some light on his heroic self-sacrifice and brings him to life
for me at the split instant that he jumped to his death. The
four year old daughter of a friend listed all the people she
knew who had died, among them Adelina and the Prince.
The Prince? I asked. Yes, silly, the prince who jumped in
to save Adelina!
I feel unspeakable regret at Brendans death, and also anguish
at the thought that Adelina might be held in some way
13

responsible in that had she not slipped he wouldnt have

jumped. Because I wasnt there to protect my daughter at
the end, a failure which strikes hard below the belt of reason
no matter what the counter-arguments, I feel driven to
protect her memory at least. While in Zermatt I spoke with
Brendans friends and asked if they were angry. At first,
yes, they answered, but then we agreed that it wouldnt
bring them back and that they both deserved to be
remembered with love.
Finally, the big difference triggered by a small change in
word order, or even in a seemingly incidental detail of
punctuation, somehow reflects the if only preoccupation
that afflicts one after a preventable death: if only she had
not reached to touch the water with her toes; if only it
hadnt been dark; if only she hadnt slipped; if only I had
not infused her with my own love of water; if only I had
warned her; if only the torrent had not been so exceptionally
strong; if only the Italian trains hadnt been on strike forcing
a one night return to Zermatt and I keep tweaking all
the small variables that would have made such a big difference
to the outcome. Of all the foolish things we do in our lives,
wanting to dip ones foot in a river is surely the least
deserving of death but logic, justice, wishful thinking
and the like have no place in events even if they pervade
ones inner discourse.
That inner discourse is largely monopolised by thoughts of
Adelina. I have travelled for work a great deal since her
death, and have found this helpful in allowing me to balance
all the inward journeying of the last few months with actual
miles covered and horizons crossed.

14

I have also had to attend to (too) many other matters and

obligations, but no matter what the business in hand, nothing
holds my attention in so sustained a fashion as my musings
about my daughter. Writing a self-portrait is proving a huge
challenge in that it puts the focus on me, yet I dont feel
that I figure very prominently in the story I am currently
living. I would much rather be writing about Adelina and
singing her praises
How has my daughters death changed my life and outlook?
Three things spring instantly to mind: people matter more,
poetry matters more, and intuition matters more.
People have always been important but they are now a
priority. I could not have survived without the human contact
and kindness I have received. The sense of compassion and
connectedness which has come from kind words and deeds,
and above all from human contact, ranging from a hand held
in conversation to whopping wordless hugs, has not only
kept me alive but also made me more alive to the difference
that individuals can and do most emphatically make.
Perhaps what has also changed is the directionality of friendship. Ever one to give, I was never very gracious about taking.
I have now come to better appreciate the simultaneously
humbling and edifying dynamic of a two-way give and take.
The consequence of people mattering more is that I am no
longer willing to spend all my time working alone in the
isolation of my study, as I have done in the last few years,
pursuing virtual connections with people I am unlikely ever
to meet and with whom I cannot build a relationship of
trust, while my friendships and face to face contacts whittle
15

away under the blade of deadlines. I am therefore cutting

back on my online teaching and prioritising connections
with people.
I am also hoping to make more time for photography and
poetry. Poetry has come to matter with a force that surprises
me. In part it has to do with the ability of poetry to express
multiple meanings simultaneously and thus transcend the
frustratingly linear confines of everyday language. Sometimes
I even wonder whether some of our most pervasive
conceptual metaphors are not determined by the linearity
of language. One of the misapprehensions I keep coming
across is the assurance that things will get better in stages,
and my grief will lessen in time. Yet the life is a journey
metaphor in which one follows the single linear path implied
by these reassurances seems misleading to me. From the
moment I stopped screaming at the news of Adelinas death,
I have been struck by how many emotional currents I can
embrace simultaneously even when totally immersed in
grief, and by how much control I seem to have in navigating
them. Loss feels more like an amputation, or the irreparable
crumpling of a once pristine metal, than a dark stretch of
the woods one eventually emerges from. Theres a way in
which Ill always be on my knees.
The most powerful metaphor I have come across on loss is
in Julian Barnes Flauberts Parrot, in which he cautions that
you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel,
bursting ... into sunshine ... you come out of it as a gull
comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for
life.4
4 Julian Barnes, Flauberts Parrot (London: Pan, 1985), p.161.

16

It is no doubt because poetry explores alternatives and

expresses the ineffable that I have found myself gravitating
towards it as the only reliable source of solace when I am
on my own. Poetry, like people, has the power to make a
difference, and a day spent without reading a poem that
does it for me leaves me doubly forlorn. Amusingly (given
the delusional dimension of this ambition), I am driven to
try my hand at all the most rigorous forms that exist.
Somewhere in the depths of my being I seem to be hanging
on to John Donnes belief that:
if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.5
The discipline required in writing this self-portrait is proving
to be a similar exercise in taming by naming. The effort is
to identify what it is one wants to name in the first place.
Because thoughts, especially exploratory concepts or loaded
emotions, only really individuate and identify themselves
as they get articulated, it is hard for me to predict what this
portrait will bring into being. Maybe thats another reason
poetry appeals to me it gives me a sense of scouting the
frontiers of language and consciousness, and of foraging
into the wilderness beyond.
Finally, intuition matters more to me now presumably
because when it comes to life and death ones instincts kick
in. After a lifetimes conditioning to give the benefit of the
5 John Donne, The triple Foole, in The Complete English Poems of John
Donne, ed. C.A. Patrides (London: J.M. Dent, 1985), pp.59-60.

17

doubt and to overrule seemingly illogical reactions, I am

now more inclined than ever to trust my gut feelings even
if I cant understand them. This may well represent the onset
of old-dog prejudice, but might also usher a welcome release
from the corset of reason and a finer attunement to what
surrounds and sustains me. I now find myself more proactive
in seeking out people I like and shying away from those who
make me uncomfortable.
Despite these differences, some important continuities exist
too. I still toy with categories and still feel the same drive
to make things better by rejigging categories where
possible. I remember how paramount it was at Adelinas
funeral that I should somehow make the people gathered
there shift their focus from loss to celebration, and turn
their tears into laughter. Building a website6 within weeks
of her death in which Adelinas life, and above all her love
of life, was depicted through pictures was part of that same
impulse to accentuate the positive. As was and I dont
fully understand this my compulsion to explain the
circumstances of her death to Adelina while I sat alone beside
her bruised and battered body, and to reassure her that
nobody was angry but only desperately sorry at a farewell
impulse gone so tragically wrong. Even though she was dead
it was somehow imperative to let her know that she was
loved.
I am also still interested in what makes people tick and in
what grows under the winter snow. Perhaps with the
difference that I am currently more inclined to observe and
6 http://www.biscott.co.uk > personal > memorials > Adelina.

18

participate than to initiate. If it is true that still waters run deep,

then a reverse causality may also hold: as I plumb the submerged
topography of loss I do indeed feel more still on the surface.
Or, to stay with the original Chinese proverb which provided
the title of my earlier self-portrait Under the winter snow the
spring grass grows: there is much more hard graft taking place
at root level than the mournful whiteness of the season might
reveal, and I am now more inclined to resign myself to these
natural rhythms than to harness and direct them. Perhaps that
is where my currently subdued sense of self comes from?
Certainly, manmade demands and deadlines dont scream with
the same stridency more often than not I find my mind
focusing on the irony rather than the urgency of the constituent
morphemes of words such as deadline.
My love of language is undiminished and I continue to draw
sustenance from it: axe words still ring and sink at intervals;
metaphors still elude and seduce. When I wrote my first Muse
portrait at the beginning of the year, the word wicket and its
Norse etymology meaning inlet or small creek resonated for
me because at the time I was putting together a photo exhibition
entitled Heavens Wicket which had to do with reflections and
the parallel world of Oxford colleges and Oxford-inspired
fantasy worlds such as Wonderland, Narnia and Middle Earth.
I have retained the title and the theme image for the poem
because those echoes still resonate today all the more so now
that the parallel world which preoccupies me is death. Hence
my current fascination for the word kismet, drawn from a
Persian verb meaning to divide and thence to allot from
which comes the notion of fate. The mixing and matching of
words, etymologies and images offer me hours of reflection.

19

One of the ideas which I find myself returning to constantly

is the various options for translating metaphors into still or
moving images. Having been sent a dozen books on
bereavement by a friend for Christmas, I was struck by how
difficult it is to find adequate metaphors for loss, and am
now pondering a project where I collaborate with the
bereaved in creating a visual expression for metaphors of
loss. Id like to reclaim the original images and free them
from the patina of verbal clichs.
I also still have the same old inclination to see the funny side
of life.When my son phoned me on his return from Zermatt,
while I was still there waiting for the repatriation of Adelinas
body, we shared a sustained exchange in which we included
all the expressions involving water that we could think of:
further down stream; water under the bridge; making
a splash; keeping ones head above it; a sinking feeling
and so on, and the relief provided by this and subsequent
expressions of irreverence has been hugely sustaining.
For instance, Anton introduced himself at the funeral service
as Adelinas brother and now my Mums new favourite to
everyones incredulity and my grateful amusement a
gratitude no doubt precipitated by my guilt at having, in a
moment of despair, asked the heavens why they had taken
from me at such short interval the two people I loved most,
my father and my daughter, only to realise oh dear
that the gathered company consisted of my son, brother,
mother and ex-husband all shifting their gaze in
uncomfortable silence. My blushing and rather clumsy
rephrasing to that is, uhm, the two people I felt most at
one with didnt redress my undiplomatic outburst, nor did
the mitigating circumstances that we had only just arrived
20

in Zermatt, only just identified Adelinas body, only just

glimpsed the magnitude of our loss. But Antons generous
humour did undo the damage. (I should perhaps add that
both children had on separate occasions asked me with
concern what would happen when the other discovered that
they were not my favourite!).
Similarly, in the weeks following the funeral, Adelinas little
half-sister entertained guests with parodies of all the music
played during the service, and the other day at a family
wedding, Anton and his cousins resumed their mutual teasing
of each others performance at the funeral, to the incredulity
of neighbouring dinner guests.
The ability of humour to right wrongs and turn the world
on its head is something I have always loved and depended
on in order to retain a sense not just of perspective but of
sanity. Milan Kunderas definition of humour is one I cherish:
Humour: the divine flash that reveals the world in
its moral ambiguity and man in his profound
incompetence to judge others; humour: the
intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange
pleasure that comes of the certainty that there is no
certainty.7
Perhaps the one emotion which I no longer experience as
I once did is that irrepressible sense of lift which Adelina
also shared. The day before she died she told Arabel, her
travel companion, that she had never been happier in her
7 Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts, trans. Linda

Asher (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p.32.

21

life, an expression of sheer joy that she had delighted me

with on a number of occasions. A few hours before she died
I had the pleasure of hearing her joyful chatter about what
she was up to when she phoned me from Zermatt.
Now I dont soar as I used to except perhaps with regard to
one topic the unashamedly doting nature of my love for
my children. I am so very glad that I never opted for discipline
over indulgence, that I always did an extra run to drop off
whatever it was that Adelina had forgotten and needed
urgently, that I was always happy to taxi her, or to meet her
after school for a trip to town, or and this small favour to
her ended up being the greatest gift to me in providing me
with so many memories of Adelina at her happiest just days
before she died to photograph her leavers ball. I simply
doted on my daughter and delighted in her company and
am defiantly happy at being able to rekindle the glow of so
many good moments lived together.
One of the most sustaining memories, no doubt because it
was a daily event for so many years, is cycling with her to
school in the mornings, even in her last year when she was
18 something she feigned disdain for since no other mother,
or so she claimed, would ever dream of doing so and how
she would make me turn back just before I could be seen
from the school gates. But rejecting expressions of affection
in the coy anticipation that more would be forthcoming was
a favourite sport of Adelinas. On those occasions when I
turned back sooner, or even more rarely when I failed to
accompany her at all, she would pout in mock (or perhaps
not!) upset. Today I cherish every one of those morning
rides up the Marston-Ferry cycle path, the way her hair
blew in the wind, the way we used to turn in parallel by the
22

playing-fields like two dolphins swimming abreast, the

enlivening pulse of that lateral line connection . A few
moments more in Adelinas company were always worth
the time supposedly lost to work.
If I compare the Muse self-portrait I wrote at the start of
2005, with the one I am endeavouring to write now at the
end of the year and on the painful side of loss, I am struck
by two reversals. The first is that the January portrait is very
much an expression of how I chose to shape my life, whereas
this portrait focuses on how life is shaping me. If we see a
portrait as consisting of the very individual profile which
emerges at the interface between shaping and being shaped
by experience, mine is morphing even as I write. Death,
illness, accidents and exile are some of the life-changing
things that happen to us unbidden and we are either destroyed
by them or we come to deal with them. Some stoical voice
in me keeps intoning just deal with it whenever I feel
anguished or unable to deliver: although I had no choice in
what happened, I have the choice of whether and up to
a point of how to carry on. Beyond what I have written
here I cannot yet say how I have dealt with or will continue
to deal with my daughters death. Some six months after
the event everything is still too much in flux. I would
certainly never be inclined to generalise or give prescriptions
on how to cope because of the non-replicable nature of the
forces at play. I think it is this quality of uniqueness, with
regard to both character and experience, which makes
bereavement (and other traumas) so very isolating. The
image that comes to mind is of a fingerprint in which each
whorl is individuated by the complementary pressures of
what we have to offer and what we have to suffer.

23

The second reversal is that in the January portrait I felt

recategorised by the world as a result of my job status, even
though nothing had changed in who I was or what I had to
offer. Now I feel that although nothing has changed
conspicuously in my interaction with the world, underlyingly
something so central has been recalibrated that everything
is altered. It is as if my life were dislocated, as if I myself
had passed through a wicket gate into another world and
were living a parallel existence. I am the same person
engaged in the same activities, capable of the same joys,
tears, hopes and fears, but I am no longer the person I had
projected when imagining the future or when anticipating
my grandchildren.
What I am coming to understand still only tentatively
is that who we are at any given moment is largely predicated
not only on who we were, but also on who we will be, or
envisage being.
Thus this time last year I was teasingly negotiating access
rights to my future grandchildren (Adelina was afraid I
would spoil them, hence the rationing), and was laughingly
dismissing her latest suggestion for names (Ulysses, Oedipus
and Henry were outlandish and I refused to trade any access
hours at all for them; Rognvald I would consider because
of the Orcadian connection but wouldnt Magnus be easier
to spell?). This year that confidence in the future belongs to
another life.
In one of several very meaningful discussions with my son
about death, he tried to console me by suggesting that
nothing really changes pragmatically for us as a result of
Adelinas death, everything ends only for her. When I
24

mentioned grandchildren, he acknowledged that they did

indeed represent a tangible difference - then added but
given the names she was considering, maybe its all for the
better! The sentiment expressed in the last sentence of my
earlier self-portrait, I very much look forward to having
grandchildren and would love nothing better than to become
a great-grandmother is a wish for the future that has always
defined me very strongly.
Valse Triste, in which both the point of departure and of
conclusion is that of a cradled infant, was written when I
first became a single mother:

Valse Triste
An infant's head
asks to be loved with
An open palm
seeks to cradle
the sine curve of
A lover's gesture
gathers movement
to release in us
An artist's hand
draws out contours
to further contain

A hold of notions
pauses, then pulses
into the strains of
An unphrased grasp
singles its medium
to sound out a ring: ten
Fingers engage.
The fashioning of intimacy
gentled by an infant's head,
Hand held.
25

Now that I am exiled from my own future, I have become

something of a stranger to myself. True to precedent, I feel
most myself when I am focussed on the here and now, when
I am in a state of concentration a personality trait which
makes me feel at ease with children, and which, according
to my son, makes mourning easier for me than for those
who are temperamentally inclined to philosophise about
the larger meaning of life. But where humans are concerned,
the here and now is always amplified with fantasy, with
projections into possible worlds. The pity is that as we grow
older those possible worlds become increasingly constrained
by probable and pressing futures, and by problematic pasts.
Relatively unencumbered by a concern for either past or
future, my driving fantasy has always been as primal as the
selfish gene has decreed to swim in tandem with my
young, and with their young in turn. That lateral line which
maintained an ever-dynamic yet optimal proximity between
me and Adelina as she grew up had, in typical human fashion,
acquired a temporal dimension to supplement its kinesthetic
function. Now the neuroblasts continue to pulse but the
echoes respond only from the past.
I feel myself to be embarking on a very long refamiliarisation
which will no doubt involve the rerouting of endless neural
networks, not only those imprinted by Adelina as an individual
over the course of our two decades of shared existence, but
also those hardwired by parenthood. The latter, I suspect,
are the ones that bypass rational and emotional intelligence
and make the loss of a child so impossible to understand.
My failure to imagine my life, or indeed my very self, without
my children comes with a small glimmer of a silver lining
26

however: I had by the same token never anticipated the

extent to which those who die live on through their legacies,
and that even someone as young as Adelina could make a
difference for the good because of who she was, how she
lived her life, and how she influenced others. Although the
evolving story of her life is denied us, it is nevertheless
possible to observe the subtler effects of her legacy on my
life, the lives of those she knew, and perhaps in ever greater
degrees of dilution on further lives still. Which suggests
that all is not lost, a small glimmer, as contained in Adelinas
Chinese name (Wei Ming, infinitesimal light), remains.
December 2005

27

Weir Wake
Across the treacherous waters
a solitary red beacon marks
the crest of the weir
where calm turns to chaos.
This time last year
you were alive.
In a few unbribable hours
the full circle seal
of a first anniversary will
have outed the stowaway
Hope deluded wetfoot
from my sands of denial.
Since time wont turn back
its arrow, nor water reverse
its flow, might I at least
regain that troubled to tranquil turn
where a solitary red beacon marks
the crest of the weir?

29

Reversals
As transient as autumn clouds,
claim the wise, or as the movements
of a dance. Life
like a white-water torrent
flashes and falls away.
Proud mountains suffer incense and obeisance
As tranquil as the sleepers vale
where a river sings, stringing garlands
through the grass. Death
like a sense-sated lover
lingers, then yields his prey.
Proud mountains suffer radiance and ebullience
As troubling as overturned truths,
Rimbauds vision describes your life
Buddhas your death. Reversals
like an unforeseen envoi
silence to have their say.
Proud mountains suffer

30

On Lighting Two Candles in Church

Madonna or Pieta,
infant Jesus or Christ the corpse,
its not in the figures but in the folds
enwrought with golden and silver light
or with the rending fall and flow
of stone struck grief my love, my love
that love is embodied
that love survives.

31

Souls in Transit
Like a feather
breathing
in the thermals of a cupped hand
Like a snowdrift
nestling
into a Buddhists begging bowl
Like a whisper
bending
to the conclave of my heart
Yours turns three times
and settles
on transience.

32

Sonnet Corona
1. The storyteller

i.m. Norman Bruce StClair Scott

From hearth to corner and in reverse order,
attention ignites. Its fuse, once lit, burns
by its own compulsion: some scenic turns,
ascending sweeps, the sharp intake of a shorter
tack, and all too soon the storys over,
reflections settle back.
Who can recall
you asked, one summer we were all
together, what I was saying before
smile before a sideways glance, time
spooled to give us a chance, broad shoulder
complicit shelter from a pending punchline
before I was so rudely interrupted by the intervening that smile again
year! What, I now wonder, do reflections retain.

33

2.
Held together by light, reflections retain
their true: immaculate understudies
identical twins, their faultless alibis.
But becalmed and bound by light they remain
bound to it, bound to its every whim
and wave, bound to dissolve or break away
like the footfalls of a lover on the day
he leaves, beating out the pulse of him.
To be dead, says Samuel Butler
is to be unable to understand that
one is alive. They come to us but
we cannot go to them. Ever
unable, despite our thirst for reciprocity,
to secure or settle for lasting symmetry.

34

3.
To secure and settle on lasting symmetry
is His prerogative, not ours. Defy
this injunction, cast off humility
and set your loom to weave eternity. Or try
just try to smuggle language through kismets
divide, to draw the filigree of verbal
endings into a timeless beyond. Forget
or reject mortality? Unpardonable!
No pardon then, only the death sentence
for the active, inceptive and progressive,
for modality, the present and future tense,
for everything but past and optative:
A panoply of paradigms sliced clean
when shutters fix the flux of time. Whose guillotine?

35

4.
Shutters fix the flux of time. Sliced seconds
stamped flat then put away for another day.
Mirrors seize time too, though they dont stop
only deftly deflect its flow. Look at the play
of then-and-when over your shoulder
as hairdressers display their labour,
then try not to think of time, shorn silver
sliver slipped between arcs of infinite
regress. A darker deflection held sway
on hearing All Things Bright and Beautiful
at the wedding I photographed a few days
after we had sung the same at your funeral.
Young guests, well dressed, pink and white flower theme,
Pallbearers, the ushers that might have been.

36

5. The Prince

i.m. Brendan BJ Killoran

Pink and white flowers of rose scented soap
sink as leaping dolphins a blue mother
and her rainbow calf race round ducks, boats
and bathtime bubbles, when first one finger
and in quick succession another three
(Please dont slip, Id begged my goddaughter)
are thrust in my face. This, she says solemnly
is how old I am. And this: 1 2 3 4
is how many people I know who have died.
What, so many? First, there is Sally,
then Uncle Sam, then Adelina you cried
and cried when she drowned and finally
theres the Prince. Hello, the Prince, whos he?
The one who dived in to save her, obviously.

37

6.
A dolphin-distance holds them in tandem
taut and true. Two arcs drawn not only
in the dust or with wet wheels on tarmac,
but through the air with that easy sync powered
by the pulse and pull of shoal-spun play.
Drawn close on the ride to school, their smiles
counter the camber of each spent day.
Each one revived now by the sweep of the High,
the curve at Queens, a dome, its shadow swollen.
By crescents. Waves. The swoop to an answer
found. The stretch and surge of a learning swerve.
By conclusions, like Carfax, carving into view.
A lateral pulse and pull still sounds the subbed
echoes of her calf, of love ascending.

38

7.
Love loops its strings and pearls around you, long
tearful strings hummed from somewhere (God knows where
for I could never sing), the swell of a song
strung to embrace and enfold as I sit there
not daring to hold your hand, to hurt you
further, tracing pain (too much to endure)
between gashes, assuring you, or trying to,
that no matter what, this is certain: you were
loved, are loved, and ever shall be. Ever
shall be. A year later, at yoga, newly
found muscles stretched and eased (a recent venture)
we are told to breathe gently and empty
our minds. Mine wells instead with that chapel
of rest and its unfathomable farewell.

39

8.
Dont probe unfathomables, let them be.
No slash and staunch, no stretching tear or twist
Procrustus might have plied (all for the best
hed have us think) will yield their mystery.
The why and why but why of a farewell
whether sudden slice, slow choke by torque, clean
break (clean? such arguments are obscene):
Loss cuts, it cuts us short a wrenching Hell.
Subvert the devil then, devise a ploy
to cry at reunions and part with joy
in the belief have faith well meet again.
Good God, is that why we invented heaven:
Faith as an answer to failed analysis?
Not till you died did I understand this.

40

9. Not till you died did I understand that

the veiled and breast-beating
mothers on TV, raven
wings flapping heavenward,
who caw to camera while
at their feet their children,
heels pressed up against the screen
bodies tight packed between
news items, delay
our dinner ululating
alienness, distasteful timing,
ah, here comes the weather at last
werent crying for the corpses we could see
but for the lives we couldnt
and wouldnt, though not because of the forecast.

41

10.
Not another stormy forecast: furious
squalls, grumbling thunder, deluge threatening
the usual bedtime weather indicating
mademoiselles mounting disdain, her most serious
displeasure, at the imminent severance
of a perfectly sustainable day.
More tempered with age, youd ask for a stay
just this one chapter one page one sentence
of execution, till you perfected
postponement, earning an incredible
two hours for just this one letter. Irascibly
underslept, I found you deep in the OED.
My turn to hold onto those days with a-b
b-a and other appeals to your dictionary.

42

11. Had you not slept on the flight over

Other than appeals to the dictionary
phrase books and practice, no private tuition
allowed: our New Year resolution
to see who could learn Italian most quickly.
Language off-casts lay strewn around the place
from your first foray into Serbo-Croat
Ill put your eye on a plate and serve it
up to you for dinner to the more commonplace
tako je, en effet, ni shuo de dui
(a childhood ruse to turn lack of lingo
into boundless approval: quite so, quite so):
our dressing up box, material for endless play.
A school trip to Vesuvius in October
might have won you the race my mercurial learner.

43

12. Winged Messenger

That evening I was shooting a wedding
locally when, still in your blues, you came
with a barely suppressed smile, the same
smile you share with your brother when pretending
your greatest feats are not worth mentioning:
Deal or fold, win or die, its only a game
and no big thing or so youd claim.
Mum, I went up solo during ATC training
today. You flew alone? Just turned sixteen? No!
I mentioned it, beaming, to the Polish waitress
though not till Id hugged you and watched you go
to the bride and one in three guests! Impressed?
Incredulous, my cloud-cavorting ever modest
angel, come to tell me lifes a game too, you know.

44

13.
Life is a game of exclusive choices
not just of coffee or tea, your place or mine
this one or that (very few voices
outside that of submission can consign
us to one, refuse us the other
unquestionably). No, the choice we face
and pay for most dearly is whether,
released from our senses, we might embrace
some nameless transcendent unbeingness
or whether, cling-filmed by the instant freshness
of our breathing membranes, we may still count
our smiles and count on them for solace
in our bubbles of embodiedness
lest all just pass and perish to no account.

45

14. Pereunt et Imputantur *

Look after the corners and the centre
will look after itself, shed say
pulling out the sofa in order to hoover.
Lost recesses beyond the working day,
loose ends within it slack hammocks, word
woven, turned taut with thought still play
at the margins of a life which, forewarned
or not, would at its heart by choice
have family. (In choices, whether earned
or stolen, lies the balance of our lives.) Loss,
in this age of profit, marks a poor investor:
a daughter drowned, this sinking mother now my cross.
If they must be accounted for (must they?), surrender:
Whether from hearth to corner, or in reverse order.
* They pass and must be accounted for.
Inscription on Sir Christopher Wrens sundial in
All Souls College, Oxford.

46

Then and Now

On the Brough of Birsay where the bull
lours, there is no whitewashed wall
no espalier where parturient pears
weigh fragrant on the light-stirred air.
That man who tends the fruit (is he
my friend, my father?) cannot therefore be
there, not unless this is a dream, his back
turned as the black beast glowers,
then charges. All round me
cliff edges, the sea.
One step
into forbidden love, out of a marriage
in or out of a job, of pain. Forget big acts of courage,
one small step onto a train, an airplane, into a waiting car.
Go smaller still the dip of a toe, a slip in the dark
then measure the cost-benefit: that is the spot
we might still be in, were we not
this very moment speeding away from it.

47

Insomniacs
Half claimed by the call
of men with shadows
and the shadows that call to men
Half pulled by the claim
of horizons crossed
and the cross of those that remain
Half lured by the pull
of muses singing
and the song white nights awaken
Half rent by the lure
of bright tomorrows
and the morrow we cant restrain
We will render our sleep to shadows
and those shadows will rend us again.

48

Untold Knowledge
The stranger sees only what he knows.
In our very house, at every turn, on tabletop and wall
mute image of a death foretold. It grows
clearer now with hindsight, for who would suppose
these silent soothsayers should one day so appal?
The stranger sees only what he knows.
Take our living room reflection the calm repose
of a summer shore held (by aerial boulders) in deadly thrall
mute image of a death foretold. It grows
heavy with significance now, as do, by my bedside, those
gifts your brought from Paestum of the diver in mid-fall;
the stranger sees only what he knows.
Or take your brothers bedroom poster: a river flows
through old Zermatt, biding its time: a warning call?
The image of a death foretold? It grows
irrefutable when the calendar in your own room shows,
for the month of your death, water, mountain, darkness, all.
The stranger sees only what he knows.
Mute image of a death foretold. It grows.

49

Trophies
Across the coldest river in Europe
the watermelon gang string themselves
strategically and face upstream
where two short straws
belly-crawl
through shallow trenches,
seize their hostages
and body wrestle them
to the riverbank.
A kick in the back,
an indiscernible splash
and the current shoots them
to ice-mottled hands and thighs
braced as for penalty shots.
The interval just long enough
for each globe to be raised
resplendent victory
Atlas like above a rock, before
sundering.
Fistfuls of the pulsing
sweetness, still warm,
till the first black pip
catches under the brazen
tooth of conquest.
But by now the next trophy
50

is hurtling heedless
towards its end.
Downstream, where the river matures
into a broad-shouldered bend,
the broken crowns float past
a laundress sudding her lament.
Dear God, there must be other ways
to savour stolen pleasure.

51

When Words Fail

1.
Your purse, passport, books in Greek and Latin:
Vergils Aeneid, Ulysses, more Homer,
some vocab; the latest Harry Potter,
your travel journal - an essential selection
for the epic adventurer you introduce
in that very first entry. In the last,
the eve of your death, the Zermatt police
warn you its dangerous to dip your toes
in the swollen river. Gefhrlich you ask
naively, dont know the word, forgetting
to taint your accent, make it convincing.
Gap year bravura: warnings taken to task
(whats danger?) and dismissed as implausible.
The foreign office calls you the invincibles.

52

2.
To those who say she was asking for it
I should answer, with cool speculation,
something about statistics, trespass, limits.
To those who say: her fault, she didnt pay attention
I should answer, smiling at the memory,
something about youth, life-lust, elation.
To those who say fair dues self-regardingly
I should answer, shaking my heavy head,
something about chance, humour, humility.
To those who say she deserves to be dead
I should answer something, anything, whether
it was implied, entailed, or just short of said.
I should answer, but I wont no, never:
Id as soon chat with a child murderer.

53

3.
Linguist, forever hiding behind words!
The Relate counsellor, annoyed now, is chiding
me to find a single word (just one? absurd)
Dare to give voice to your feelings, stop hiding!
Picture a triangle: father, mother, children,
then hew one link with the axe of divorce:
how can I ensure, this is my earnest concern,
that the other two dont buckle under the force
of severance? One word, she hissed. Unhappy.
Her state, not mine. At last! Now hold onto it,
Nurture it, let it grow. Add one more, slowly.
Fun! Shall I, while Im at it, emote on the carpet?
Mother, son sweet daughter severed: yet you persist
with the call of words, unhappy linguist!

54

Time and Tide

1.
Endless word endings, page upon page:
full evenings spent testing your memory
on each last inflection this language
though dead long dead so intimately
enlivened our present with. Remember how you,
already familiar with the bias of voice
(more active victories than passive defeats), who
knew to modulate moods, articulate tenses,
would sketch me a verbscape where every
small splinter of classical action
could be picked out for posterity
with pincer precision: wordsmith perfection!
Dead languages outlive you now, as do,
by each table youd mastered, the ticks assigned to you.

55

2.
The ticks that mark those many tables
in your Greek and Latin primers
are no longer applicable.
I cross them out, one after the other,
not because I have no more use
for declensions or cant, alone, complete
them, but because since you died they refuse
to speak for you. Only the verb to be
(would that you were, that you are, that you live
still and how I wish could ever be!), when shoehorned
into the perfect or past infinitive,
speak true: I was to have warmly welcomed
you home and you were to have returned shortly
(unfulfilled plans); it was to be your (destiny).

56

3.
They bastardised the lingo as well as
the locals, those Normans, when they conquered.
The incoming generation werent bothered
let the natives learn French so it was wet nurse
power that spoon-fed their sprogs the language:
blunt stem lumps at first, more pidgin than finish,
like those winter stumps of Plane pollards fresh
lopped in readiness for Springs vocab surge.
What time-pruning secateur, what tense-reaper
slipped a blade under our last remaining
fullsome verb (both aux and essence), snapping it? If I am, there you are, still am her mother
(for thats indeed how it is), why then is
she not still my daughter she is, she is.

57

Villanelle
How long can a life last? As long
as the sun rises, as the heart beats, or
as memories alight. An echos length of song
slips through the shutters of the night, not strong
enough to stir the light just yet; nor soundless as before.
How long can a life last? As long
as we do, or as we want it to? Too long
for many, not long, not long enough for more.
As memories alight, as echoes lengthen song,
as shadows outgrow those whom they belong,
so we reach beyond in hope of another shore.
How long? Can a life last as long
as a touch lingers, as a smile plays? Do we wrong
the heart with this word sprung pulse we seek to restore?
Yet memories alight in an echos length of song.
One is born that the other may be borne:
day and night, borne and reborn.
How long can a life last? As long
as memory alights, as echo lengthens song.

58

Hope
1.
Beaked birds flying above the papyrus
of my tablecloth approximate flight
only in our minds: what seems to us
so quaintly authentic, this life-like
(havent you seen it all in Egypt then?)
scene of local flora, fauna, light
is face it just colour stamped on cotton,
cheap at that, nowhere near convincing.
What of this small bird, darting up the stem
of my wine glass, mirror imaged, seeking
like an unleashed alter-ego to escape
and soar on spirit thermals. Will it take wing?
Shall I fly too? Yes! Heres to hope! ah, too late:
I toast. It falls. Pigment beside my plate.

59

2.
Start small, as small as this fast decreasing
distance between thought and nib, nib and page
when impulse strikes a spark, realising
itself; then slowly, with great care, disengage
from the starting point its pause, its promise
an innocent and as yet undamaged
line, the kind of questing line that artists
take for a walk to see where it goes, where
its led and leads them, earnest, unprejudiced
while chance swirls its crimson skirts between desire
and terrain, a taunting pirouette of harm
and gain, of what we suffer and counteroffer.
Come life, lets walk this timeline arm in arm
tracing out our thumbprint turn by hopeful turn.

60

3.
The minutes counting out each hour
swell with the weight of whats still to be done
and expand times contour, demands
pending like the sweep and curve of pregnancy.
Late afternoon in Sidi Bou Said
and there are no hours here, only shadows
stretching feline over white walls, desires
tracing the whorls and lances that St Louis,
patron saint, forged with his Berber princess
in this village touched by the boundless blue
of hope. Some still claim that hopes but desire
or demand yoked to impotence: futile.
Hope? The silent surge of fecund shadows
from wrought hours and iron caged windows.

61

On swimming butterfly
1.
Three arcs (embedded one within the other)
each grows in salience as its size decreases.
Arms flung at full stretch define the outer
whose furthest reach a sunken thrust increases.
The second, like a dolphins curving spine,
streamlines the singing sine-waves either side
of a winning arrows unwavering line.
The smallest arc of all, only as wide
as a mouth needs clearance to suck in air,
empowers the lungs that power the shoulders
that power, by turn, the overarching pair
of arms propelling these soaring songsters.
Within these arcs, lies another still:
a breath stopped then resumed at will.

62

2.
That sudden intake of a breath long stayed
heard in a newborns startle and a lovers
gear-give glottal, too often misportrayed
as inflammation or, worse, a voyeurs
rasping ogle. Yet lull yourself into
the quick then slow of long distance breathing
the rhythmic push-pull of that sing-song one-two,
windpipe wicket the world inverting
from a boundless out-there to this chambered
poems whispered wisdom: here-now, here-now.
This is where ams conceived, where cans empowered
where will emerges from its heaving hollow.
From here all space proceeds, all time eternal now
all life resolved by breaths resounding know-how.

63

3.
Stretch marks on the soft swell of its surface
where breezes brush the tenderest caresses
mark beauty out, and isnt that the purpose
of each small blemish: it embellishes.
Tempted by this breathing bellys promise
dive into it, revel in its warm embrace
here rhythms coax us into the beyondness
of floating worlds, of long forgotten space.
But once were in, the beauty eyes beheld
is broken: its silk skein torn, passions
cross-hatched thrash back, our quietude dispelled
whether we summon or silence sirens.
Dressed, with both feet poised on terra firma:
ripples sing across the sighing water.

64

4.
The thrall of sustained symmetrys achieved
without regard for those improbable worlds
(much as childrens drawings like to show), where
a single mouth-like door and jet-stream path
exhales a pair of windows, butterflies,
parents, siblings, eyes, ears, limbs and more.
Parents, siblings, eyes, ears, limbs and more
inspire a pair of windows, butterfly,
a single mouth-like door and jet-stream path
(much as childrens drawings like to show) where,
without regard for these improbable worlds,
the thrall of sustained symmetry achieved
lies not in the balance of parity
but in its loss, and surprise recovery.

65

The Last Word

Mastered by size in rill, rivulet, river
or as in trickle, shoot, rapid by speed.
Sounded by roots, gridded by words, never
mind that these, like irrigation ducts, proceed
through barren tracts of ineffability
to turn lushgreen expanses our tongues will feed.
Never mind the chattering agility
that babbles breaking news downstream to Rima
shot through with glacial irrepressibility
(for talk, they say, is the Quechua source of Lima).
Language, though confluent with water
in its liquid loquacity, may seem a
reversible metaphor in which tenor
(linguists refute this, poets find otherwise)
and vehicle replace each other, however
no Babel-sprung deluge can outwit, outspeed, outsize
resound, reroute, reverse or otherwise outmaster
(its in the last word that the difference lies)
this treacherous home-stretch of word-wringing water
set to disgorge into the hereafter.

68

Wei Ming
Here, where mirth murmurs
and fledgling mischief starts to stir,
where a wellspring of wellbeing
babbles with ebullience: yes, here
in this gladdening.
Now, when thought murmurs
and fledgling insight starts to stir,
when the quickfire of mind firing
seizes a nano-presence: yes, now
in this quickening.
You, whose light murmurs
and fledgling spirit starts to stir,
whose gladness and quickness
now infinitesimal essence: yes, you
in this, heartening.

67

Extract from Adelinas Travel Journal

Chapter 1: Oxford, '05

July 5th

I suppose I ought to start with Oxford, because that is where

our story begins, and where the characters in our story
begin. And it is worth mentioning that at the time of writing
this the author knows no more than the character as to what
turns this story is to take, nor in which city they may end.
Therefore the author embarks on the journey which is this
book with the same degree of innocence as the protagonists
embark on a journey which, for some amount of time at
any rate, will be their lives. It is a pleasant and rare experience
for the reader to know more of what is to come than either
the author or characters of the book. Nonetheless, before
we digress too far, let us begin.
***
Arab lay, curled up on a bare wooden bench. One scrawny
pink knee protruded from a tear in her tights. She wore all
the clothes that she owned - it was a cold night. Her short
red skirt was torn and stained: "I feel stains give a thing
character'' she had once reflected after a particularly rude
comment had been passed on her overall lack of regard for
her appearance. Like most people she knew Arab did not
conform to any stereotyped category of people: she was a
revolutionary anarchist, intent on making the world a better
place: she adored Jack Kerouac's writing but loathed his
69

character for having abandoned his wife. Arabel at the same

time was extremely cultured, reading every book she had
access to, which, in her younger years had even meant
shoplifting. Such were the extents her anarchic love of
literature would push her to. On returning home from
school she would rather read one of her favourite poets:
Rimbaud, Shelley, or Ginsberg than watch the television.
And in the pub her conversation would steer towards
philosophy or politics rather than unsubstantial gossip. Which
is not to say that she lacked humour: she saw amusement
in everything, and anything that was beyond her
understanding she assumed to be ironic. At this moment in
time, however, with her long golden ringlets hanging off
the bench, and a rug wrapped round her shoulders for
warmth, Rossetti's brush would have trembled at the chance
to replicate this forgotten 'ancilla domini'.
20 meters outside, in the garden of this house, slept another
girl, by the remains of a fire from the previous night.
Although she had finished school a few days before, she still
wore her blazer, and her pockets bulged with chewed pens
and ink cartridges. The morning dew moistened her hair
and as the first few drops of rain fell upon her cheek she
awoke. The fire was weak and she shifted nearer, craving
warmth. Daylight had timidly crept out of the vault but the
sun had not risen. And being thus on the grass, Adi reflected
on the last few days. On Thursday she had sat her final Alevel exam: Greek prose composition, and since the minute
she had marched triumphant from the exam hall down to
Uni Parks with a bottle of Cava in one hand and a blaring
radio in the other, she had spent scarcely a minute in the
banal clasp of sobriety. After picnics and boat trips and clubs,
on that first day of freedom from the shackles of school
70

which had restrained her her entire life (which is not to

suggest that our protagonist associated any displeasure with
her school days) Adi realised that she had left her house keys
at home.
It is possible that to some losing one's keys might pose a
problem, however, it was common practice for the young
women of Oxford to take advantage of their living in a
university town. The large student population resulted in
a multitude of beds in the city which supplied a safe sanctuary
for sleep.
***

Zermatt

July 25th

On our first day we decided to climb up the Matterhorn

wearing mini skirts and plimsolls (much to the disgust of
professionals with their huge packs and ropes). Having come
straight from sea level, we had an excuse for getting quite
so out of breath. Anyway, by the time I made it to base camp
I realised that if I didnt sprint most of the way back, Id
miss the last bubble.
That night, after a carton of Jamilla we managed to get
exceptionally silly. All ended in tragedy, however, after we
tried to go paddling in the river: the police got angry and
said Das is gefhrlich then I made the mistake of asking
in German what gefhrlich was looked very much as
though I was taking the piss.

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Text of Yearbook Entry

I cant believe weve made it 17 years of late preps and
skived detentions, so many of which have been spent at The
High.
If ever we got in trouble, which to be honest, was rather
often, we blagged our way the hell out of it, just like Iphigenia
and just like Orestes (fesch) and Pylades and just like well
do for the rest of our lives.
When the bell tolls and it tolls for us alone (sorry, Donne)
it will be the things we didnt do, not the things we did do
that well end up regretting; so quid sit futurum est fuge
quaerere (thanks, Horace). Before I get too profound, or
profane (Rozi), a personal note to:
Arabel: je moccupe des nuages presque autant que des
evenements: but if ever theres a sunny day Ill meet you on
Broad St. and well build that barricade
Rozi: or should I say Scosomandus Skar? Ive said it before
and Ill say it again: thank you, without you I would never
have gotten into half as much trouble nor have had half as
much fun. So Ill see you May day next year, and the year
after that, and every year til theres no cherries left and four
horsemen pay us a visit and then Ill see you later on, in the
place where we are gone, where its always double maths
and never break, and Ill get a swig in hellshit, I need that
old rhyming dictionary. Love ya, Radiman Slin.
73

Stefurz: cant leave without bringing up bugger boo, the

BBBs, and Thursday afternoons spent at Tricksters
Julia: I mean Lydia I cant believe you cheated on me with
a 75 yr. Old Frenchman. Me: Are you going to die today?
You: If you ask me on a Monday, Id say OF COURSE I AM,
IM ON HOLIDAY WITH ADI
Enjolras: je taime, cela suffit.
To eidenai ouden, w Sokratez, eu dokei soi, alla
egwge, panta oida.

To all my teachers: Im sorry and thank you and if ever Im

rich and famous come knock on my door and Ill open a
bottle of Dom Perignon in the long run it will have been
on you after all.

74