The Fiddle

 

The Fiddle

 

 

Words are trip-wires, their sudden consonants

tease, bring shame. Fingers fumble too,

trying to write or draw with left hand tied.

 

Trapped music sings in his head. At last

he begs piano lessons. Fingers, stretched,

find tunes by pressing tacky ivory.

 

But not for long. Cash goes on uniforms.

not for him, kept home to wash and press,

while others go to grammar school.

 

His first job, farm labourer, pays turnips, spuds.

Not till trainee grocer can he earn enough

to buy a violin, and cradle it, and stroke its wood.

 

Unlatching the back gate one day, he finds

kid brother scoring goals, the violin

a tangle of strings booted up the yard.

 

 

Angela Topping’s carefully crafted poetry probes love, death, parenthood and the intricacies of relationships. She exposes human frailty in her unpicking of family history, the suppressed eroticism of forbidden love and the magic of the everyday. Her wit is metaphysical in its playfulness and she slyly makes us laugh at ourselves through sharp observations. She uses familiar figures such as Peter Pan and Frankenstein’s monster to comment on marriage and parenthood using imagery which is often startling in its originality and deeply sensuous. This major new collection, which includes some poems from her acclaimed and twice reprinted first collection, has been long awaited by discerning readers.