Hi Arthur,

I seem to recall a previous poem about grieving and a child with an orange,
but no matter, I'm reading this - and poems often get recycled! And this
one's really, really, interesting!
A few (rather long!) comments.

The poem's in the past tense (it interests me that the past tense is so
often preferred in narrative pieces, and most fiction) except for the stanza
that begings with "Here" (a present tense word!) followed by"was" (a past
tense word).

I think the poem is working with different times in the past:
!. Being in the playground.
2. Sat with an orange etc.
3. Seeing Granma's coffin.
4. in the museum
5.And it's written from the present time ("I must have been a morbid
child...")
6.And it ends with the future.

So there's an awful lot of past times in it. So, so many different times.
So...
I'm wondering if each separate time span in the poem could be a total
stanza. And I'm wondering if the lines could be twice their length (the
internal rhymes in the lines would add, I feel, to the way it works). It's
well worth a draft to see how you feel about it - and a few revisions if
phrases, or grammatical glitches, start to scream at you. I'm thinking of
the shape of the poem not just helping it's obvious sounds and it's rhythms
but being subsumed a little and then its shape is also helping its content.
(And that change might highlight the possible redundancy of the first
stanza! I'm not too sure it's needed!)

And two other comments:
The line: Death swung in mockery of life. is an interruption to the
narrative, is what you're telling us - and the rest is showing. If you
thought that then, you might have to indicate that. I feel as if I read it
as the writer adding that from the "now" that is indicated in the first
line.

And the ending... is too much like a poem ending to be any good for a good
poem! Mud doesn't laugh, it splats and squelches! And what matters more? The
mud or the feet? (I'd say, the feet!). I'd switch the lines round and say
something less poetic for the mud - bare feet and mud create lovely sounds
when they meet and I'm probably going the spend the rest of the day
supressing thoughts of how to describe the squelchy, squirty, squash of the
noise and think of the things I need to think about to keep me out of
trouble and get to supper time without forgetting to do too many things!

Bob

Who's also thinking a lot about the title: there's so much going on in the
depths of this poem that the title, The Mummy, feels a bit slight. It's an
OK title, but... it might be one of those poems that needs as much thought
given to bouncing titles round and round until something as good as the poem
turns up.

>From: Arthur Seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: The Mummy ( oops!)
>Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:06:15 +0100
>
>The preferred version:
>
>
>
>
>
>The Mummy
>
>
>
>I must have been a morbid child
>
>to be drawn so easily from the playground,
>
>away from the shouts and laughter,
>
>to the long silent room,
>
>that housed the municipal museum.
>
>
>
>New to death,
>
>I knew only one death.
>
>Day I dawdled, lazy as a trout,
>
>down the sunlit stream of  an afternoon,
>
>uncertain of the arts of grieving,
>
>I sat to finish my orange and wet a scuffed knee.
>
>Grandma laid in pine,
>
>face carved with pain,
>
>the perfumes of zest
>
>that tinged the tentative kiss,
>
>sunlight sieved through drawn curtains.
>
>
>
>Nettles and the sound of rain
>
>bleak on elder leaves
>
>across a moorland yard.
>
>
>
>Here was a place
>
>where death glared behind glass,
>
>beyond the probe of rain
>
>and spite of nettles.
>
>Death swung in mockery of life.
>
>Still birds caught in flight.
>
>An eagle, clamped on heathered rock,
>
>rid a rabbit of its plaster bowels,
>
>beak and claw red and bright forever.
>
>  "Vulpes vulpes", the glass-eyed fox,
>
>teeth white in grinning rictus,
>
>pinned, with bloody paw, a torn grouse.
>
>I shaped strange words with a quiet mouth,
>
>my reflection wraith in glass.
>
>
>
>She slept under a thin black leatherette cloth;
>
>a cloth I lifted often.
>
>The smeared vague mound of her nose and pits of eyes
>
>were all that made that yellow mud a face.
>
>Her slender shoulders tapered
>
>to the ragged bandage at her feet.
>
>About twelve she was, tiny,
>
>Princess of the Upper Nile,
>
>and those were her toe-bones, the label said,
>
>those polished, earthy  pebbles,
>
>spilled from the burst bands.
>
>
>
>'When the four corners of the earth shall meet
>
>you will rise again':
>
>the hieroglyphs promised.
>
>
>
>When the birds swoop and mute swan sings;
>
>the ape gibbers, the pinned spider scuttles,
>
>when stuffed fox yips
>
>and eagle soars with dripping beak;
>
>when rain beads on shining nettle,
>
>those broken feet may dance again
>
>and mud laugh loud as spring.