Line: After the cups, the marmalade, the tea
FEEDING THE BIRDS
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea
she put the other kitchen things away
and went outside to feed the birds. A robin
strutted, proprietor of an urn. Crows, crowded
on village housetops, watched disdainfully.
Sparrows and chaffinches began to fly
down from the outer apple trees. She threw
crumbs and poppy-seeds of bread to them,
cheese-parings, crust and rind. Around the grass,
soft, wet and ordinary, heaps of ivy,
recently stripped from the old buildings,
lay piecemeal in untidy remnants,
where here and there an early snowdrop spear
clearing the level of the lawn, awoke.
A girl the woman knew came by the gate
among the birds, and told her sorry tale.
She'd gone to see her dying father,
and while she was away, failed to sign on
and now her money had been stopped. She'd eaten
only a bag of christmas oranges
for nearly a week. Theyıd offered her a job
dry-stone walling, despite her doctorıs line
saying she was pregnant. Then her father died.
Then they gave her a cheque she couldnıt cash
no bank account. She'd had a miscarriage
up at the cottage, brought about perhaps
by worry and starvation.
So the woman
took the girl indoors into the kitchen,
among the pots, the cups, the marmalade,
the tea, and shoved a pan at her, and said,
Eat this, cook this, and put this in your pocket,
and packed some groceries for her, remarking,
We've learned this: always keep a store of food,
your cupboards, freezer, tins and apples,
and use your larder for its proper purpose,
to share it with your fellows when they need it.
The cups, the marmalade, the tea are not
for nothing; there's a kitchen in the life
of everyone. The girl ate hungrily
and talked as needfully, then went away,
wandering like the birds, and left the woman
taking the measure of her morning's work
among the cups, the marmalade, the tea.
Sally Evans
(Q: Do Americans know our usage 'sign on', - followed by 'They' which is
universally understood in UK? )
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