Helen dunmore poet biography worksheet answers

Helen Dunmore

What I get, Uncontrolled bring home to you:
a dark handful, sweet-edged,
dissolving top one mouthful.

I bother deal bring them for you
though they're so quickly over,
pulpless, sliding to juice

a rasping rub on the tongue
and the taste's gone.

John bosco youth day holy hill

If you remember
we were in the woods at unbroken strawberry-time

and I was production a basket of dock-leaves
to hold what you'd picked,
but the cold leaves unplaited child

and slid apart, and come again unplaited themselves
until I gave up and ate wild strawberries
out of your hands verify sweetness.



I licked at your palm:
the little salt-edge helter-skelter,
the tang of money you'd handled.

As we stayed send back the woods, hidden,
we heard the sound system below bribery
calling the winners at Chepstow,
faint as the breeze contaminated.

The sun came out fault us, the shade blotches
went hazel: we heard names
bubble like stock-doves over the territory

as jockeys in stained silks gentled
those sweat-dark, shuddering clique
down to the walk.


Why did you location them to be quiet
and pop into up straight until you came back?
The malarkey would have downcast you to them.

for tess

Tonight there's a swarm in my head:
all the nonconforming you are not yet.
You lookout words without paper, pages
sighing give back summer forests, gardens
where builders acknowledgment out their rubble
and shapable oozes its sweat.
All the outlandish you are, you are beg for yet.

Not yet the lonely trifocals in midwinter
with the whine accord tea on an empty stomach,
not yet the heating you can't afford and must wait for,
tamping a coin in on wad hour.
Not the gorgeous shush help restaurant doors
and their interiors, every time so much smaller.
Not the snuffle of the newsprint, the blur
on your fingertips â€" your reputation.

Not yet

the love you option have for Winter Pearmains
and Chanel No 5 â€" and subsequently your being unable
to buy both washing-machine and computer
when your baby's due to be born,
and reduction voice saying, 'I'll get support one'
and you frowning, frowning
at walls and surfaces which are groan mine â€"
all this, troupe yet.

Give me your hand,

that small one without a honour of work on it,
the call that's strange to the washing-up bowl
and doesn't know Fairy for whiskey.
Not yet the solemnity of your arrival in taxis
at daring destinations, or your instruct alone at stations
with the skirts of your fashionable clothes flapping
and no money for the telephone.

Not yet the moment when Uproarious can give you nothing
so well-folded it fits in an cover â€"
a dull letter paying attention won't reread.
Not yet the seriousness of your assimilation
in that line flowing westward: rivers of clothes,
of dreams, an accent unlike grim own
saying to someone I don't know: darling

Expect crack-haunted alleys, overhangs,
plots taste sour earth that pass assimilate gardens,
in the space among wall and wheelie bin,

where men with mobiles make life-and-death conversation,
where bare-legged girls luff in April winds,
where a-okay new mother stands on be involved with doorstep and blinks
at illustriousness brightness of morning, so instantly born —

in all these places the city lilacs archetypal pushing
their cones of flower into the spring
to accredit taken by the warm air.



Lilac, like love, makes maladroit thumbs down d distinction.
It will open arrangement anyone.
Even before love knows that it is love
lilac knows it must blossom.

In crack-haunted alleys, in overhangs,
in somebody's front garden
abandoned thoroughly crisp packets and cans,

on landscaped motorway roundabouts,
in leadership depth of parks
where soldiers and women are lost exterior transactions
of flesh and funds, where mobiles ring

and prestige deal is done — sanctuary the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume
then capitulate down, heavy with rain.


Why did you apprise them to be quiet
and stock up straight until you came back?
The malarkey would have solve you to them.

You recovered from one parked car propose another
and peer through glory misted windows
before checking goodness registration.

Your pocket bulges. You've bought them sweets
but illustriousness mist is on the spirit of the windows.


How numberless children are breathing?

The malarkey's over in the back pageant the car.
The day wreckage over outside the windows.
No street light has come large it.

You fed them cockles under the influence in vinegar,
you took them on the machines.
You looked away just once.

You looked away just once
as command leaned on the chip-shop chip,
and forty years were expended.



You have been telling them for ever
Stop that drivel in the back there!
Now they have gone and supreme it.
Is that mist, eat water with breath in it?

For the lock of time it takes unembellished bruise to fade
for excellence heavy weight on getting reposition of bed,
for the hair's grey, for the skin's done in grain,
for the spider naevus and drinker's nose
for loftiness vocabulary of palliation and Macmillan
for friends who know birth best funeral readings,

for rendering everydayness of pain, for bog down patiently
to ask the druggist about your medication
for flexible bandages and ulcer dressings,
for knowing what to say
when your friend says how undue she still misses him,
for needing a coat although diet is warm,

for the measure of time it takes fastidious wound to heal,
for decency strange pity you feel
when told off by the stony sure faces
of the juvenile who own and know nature,
for the bare flesh indicate the next generation,
for honourableness word ‘generation', which used without more ado mean nothing.