for my father & mother, my daughters, my sons &
stoneking
when i was 33 i met a man
he took my hand
he said
the lines on your hand are a map
of your life
we are born with these lines
they can be changed by
inward working
&
outward working
he stared at the lines on my hand
he said
the man who you think is your father
is not your father
there is a
secret surrounding your birth
i crept away
later i came to my mothers house
the boat slid between
the huge sleeping hills
seagulls screamed over my head
their eyes cruel
i said to my mother
who is my father
my mother said nothing
for a long time
nothing
then she said
your father
is the jewish painter
patrick hayman
they said i had jewish eyes
i was afraid my father would not want me
i sent a photograph of myself
i looked like an indian
i wore a white feather in my hair
i told him about
my broken marriage
my abortions
my lovers
my children
my self imprisonment
i said
life is a glass mountain
i keep climbing up
i keep falling down
i live in a dream world
i turn everything i love
into a fetish
i erect this fetish
in the center
of
my
life
from this
i make my paintings
my father wrote to me
he wanted me
i wanted him' he had no children
only me
he wanted me to come and stay with him
in london
i was afraid of the world
i did not wear clothes very often
i did not eat meat
i lived high up in a hidden valley
within a circle of hills
a great river rushed down the valley
and met another river
the land was full of foxgloves and stones
i lived in an old gold miners house by the river
i wrote
i know only the foxgloves
the throats of the foxgloves are spotted
spotted inside
i shall never walk on the other side
of the river
yet i bathe in its waters
i did not show my paintings to anyone
from the age of 26
i hid them in cupboards instead of food
i stood at the airport
my plaits were dying silkworms
my father hovered
unfit for worldly affairs
bound in the still egg of a dream
in his long gabardine coat
his curls straggling on his collar
his smooth olive face
blurry & secretive
his mouth opulent
his gentle eyes bespectacled
he was frightened when he saw me
cleaving to the wall
as if he wanted to escape
he had run from me all these years
we drove away in a big black taxi
the tall dark house was full of his paintings
i brought some of my paintings
to show him
in a head on collision
we recognized each others
queerly mapped territory
we wanted each other
yet
we rejected each other
violently
each one aghast at the others
likeness
each one turning away
from
love
offered
