Eliot's line is a bizarre fantasy, Sally, but you have surely drawn a
picture even more unlikely than his

P-P


>From: Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New : Hyperpoem- after the cups, the marmalade, the tea
>Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 23:51:09 +0000
>
>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? )




Perpetua Pullman


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