Who is popular today?

for Cliodhna Ní Ríordáin
When mother died We opened the windows To let her time freeze up in the cold air Listening to the Brahms Requiem, I sang along That all flesh is ash, ash in her coffin. Inadequate machinery took it rattling down. We heard a hollow sound in our silence Driving through the polder, The firmament had landed on the ground Its stars frozen in the snow covered fields, To enter a box of concrete where we stood waiting For her flesh to turn to ash. A child voiced our last question, where had Grandmother gone?
Then I stopped asking mother questions I crossed the Andes And saw a condor spread my scream Sat shiva for you, mother On a pier in Chile feeding the pelicans fish And the Pacific with the pages of my unread book Days of travel on a small bus Listening to Mahler’s 4th in my earphones With that bus attendant, her wave of shining long hair Like a perpetual dark flag in front of my dead eyes. People handed me back my forgotten wallet with a smile At the exotic market where I had gone to call mother Because I was so far away from home I couldn’t remember That her voice on the line was dumb with ash I told her all the same How I spotted a puma catching up with the speed of my life That had been hers, mother’s And how I loved being her child.
Judith Mok was born in Bergen in the Netherlands and writes in English. She has published three novels and four books of poetry. She has been twice nominated for the Francis McManus short story award and received the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship. Her memoir The State of Dark will be published next year.