This Fairly Multicoloured, Ever-changing Skin
Perhaps, I’d think, though I came spectacularly into the world
in my very best birthday suit, lying shivering till
firm hands fixed me up, gift-wrapping me for Mummy -
in towelling, bootees and bonnet,
I wasn’t born to wear this browny-pink?
Nor did I think I was born to fig-leaf my nakedness
with veneer of workaday Civilisation,
uniformly conforming me to their paradigm with
mind set on shrouding respectability, on getting
The Job, The Husband, conforming to their secure way of living
in blouse, neat suit, 10 dernier tights, polished shoes.
They did their outmost with me though;
while I wriggled in their hands to free myself,
to swim in muddy depths to find the other eels,
I was laced in sensible heels, regulation blazers,
skirts, which I’d still find a way to subvert,
rolling waistbands to my chin, if I could,
not to be the rebel they’d hold me for, but to hide the ugly child
they’d scold me for.
Strange how this thought infiltrated to my very core,
but always Freedom my burgeoning wings took to explore
disguise, guising every day I struggled, tottering in the world,
gathering fabrics, ribbons, fancy buttons, zips about me
like a bower bird, not feathering my nest,
but constructing through the wardrobe a host of different looks,
my identity fashioned furtively by night,
embroidered from the eye of parental expectation
who this strange creature was, how this awkward daughter
was s’posed to turn her head and look.
Eventually the masks became that eccentric woman,
being Pierrot, the Buffoon, the Witch, the Dancing Queen.
But while to the outside world sequins twinkled, feathers smiled
behind them my features were wreathed funereal, as if I stood beside
the grave
my constructed self had dug.
And yet endlessly performing solo in the theatre of my life
I’d grasped an essence that touched the palette-box of skin;
for in understanding that approaching others, it’s misguided to
judge by its cover the book, our appearance nonetheless speaks
volumes of our values, how we look paints attitudes, our self-beliefs.
Suddenly, Primitive bodies strode centre of my stage,
Heads held high, looked me in the eye,
proud, strong beings,
not the office-slumped backs of those sartorially enrolled.
Nightly in my dreams came crouching by my side, ochred faces,
smiles, sisterly hands daubing mine to meet with theirs.
Later, as we leapt the fire and drummed and danced till dawn
ritual masks opened human from the many layers of being,
of social conditioning into the otherworldly animal that I am.
Then deep into Primitive
Me I began to
journey,
standing naked with fellow celebrants,
soft damp sponge hueing pink skin blue, following bridge of nose
to curve of breast, to splay of toes,
till I stood with loin-cloth and copper chest-plate my only protection
from cold, damp air on that lunar Beltane night.
There I the woaded warrior-guide of that modern Celtic rite
of spring into fertile summer,
with spiralled arms held so tall,
in anoraks and scarves thousands before me,
vanishing so small.
Then I felt the beautiful child I’d always really been, and knew
this to be One of me, one with whom I truly shine to be;
equally able to play all Life’s many roles,
whether archetypal Maiden, Mother,
Warrior, or Crone,
for I’d discarded garb of sheep, prone unconsciously to be worn
till,
with the flock each year regimentally shorn.
No price has my finest fleece, I now declare, for being a kin
to the chameleon, it isn’t what they think.
No, all I’ve ever been born to wear’s
this fairly multicoloured, ever-changing skin.
Helen Moore
Also see The Nature of my Heart
The
Bard 2003/4: