Fergus Allen
Genealogy
Those whom you pursue
Were not the stocky dark-haired ones
(They went to the wall
Or more likely over the cliffs)
Nor the blunt-headed heavyweights,
Lamented arrivals,
But coming in between from marshland
Dolichocephalics
Nondescript in the mass but able,
Hot-tempered ousters later ousted,
Conquerors, then conquered.
In old age ninety generations
Is a distance just within grasping.
What links with whom are you in need of?
Would it discount your unimportance
To be sure your genes
Or some of them in first editions
Had gone to earth between stone slabs,
A long barrow, a lapsong hummock
In a pasture of rank cocksfoot
Spattered with cow-dung,
With the midges endlessly
Whirling over snuff-coloured pools?
Or would you find it more affecting
If the carrier of those genes
That shaped your ear-lobes
Had been a rallier of rebels,
A raiser of hopes in the dispossessed,
Who then shouted and lunged with pikes
In backyards and alleyways,
All of them ending on the gallows?
Or had landlorded it in gaiters
Over Muster acres,
Half-fuddled with alcohol,
While above in a chilly bedroom
In a cursive hand
A maiden lady wrote a novel,
Long, heartfelt and stilted,
Seen by none but a female cousin,
Barely skimmed by her?
But the tree needs pruning.
Those who are only names on gravestones
And the meanly wicked,
Unlucky or soft in the head
Are subjects for you on your ladder
Wielding the secateurs and culling
Twigs to make a bonfire.
And the smoke elevates itself
Among the acceptable branches,
And the steel-ruled sunlight
Grey on grey picks out
The seedlings that shoot from the humus.
Fergus Allen, The Brown Parrots of Providencia, Faber and Faber, 1993.