Vivienne Finch: Rite of Passage

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RITE OF PASSAGE
... and what a black mountain Has blocked the world from the light. It's time — It's time — It's time To give back to God his ticket. — Marina Tsvetayeva I am never frightened when I'm with you, she had whispered yet out of some tiny weir of ordinary life swam a sadness, a recognition of loss. Stars struggled out. She fingered the coin in her pocket. Dante said: Within its deep infinity I saw ungathered and bound by love in one volume the scattered leaves of all the universe. The serrated coin cut against her finger, asked to be spent, to be dealt with — her skin remembering his hand stroking away the fear. I'm leaving you, she had said, across my eyes death, crow-like, is drawing his black-scarfed wings. It is dark where I'm going, and his hand felt the warmth which was all that would remain like a kiss around the bones and the pain of her body. Faces, hearts : brief as photographs and suicide. That coin in her pocket. About to be spent in the rainy twilight, but there are times when ......
VIVIENNE FINCH

RITE OF PASSAGE

... and what a black mountain
Has blocked the world from the light.
It's time — It's time — It's time
To give back to God his ticket.
— Marina Tsvetayeva

I am never frightened
when I'm with you,
she had whispered

yet out of some tiny weir
of ordinary life swam
a sadness, a recognition
of loss.

Stars struggled out.
She fingered the coin in her pocket.
Dante said: Within its deep
infinity I saw ungathered
and bound by love in one volume
the scattered leaves of all the universe.

The serrated coin cut against her finger,
asked to be spent, to be dealt with —
her skin remembering his hand
stroking away the fear.

I'm leaving you, she had said,
across my eyes death, crow-like,
is drawing his black-scarfed wings.
It is dark where I'm going,

and his hand felt the warmth
which was all that would remain
like a kiss around the bones
and the pain of her body.

Faces, hearts : brief as photographs
and suicide. That coin in her pocket.
About to be spent in the rainy twilight,

but there are times when ......

VIVIENNE FINCH

Vivienne Finch was born 6th June, 1946 in New Malden, Surrey, UK. As a teenager she suffered a diving accident and was paralysed from the neck down. Despite this she led a busy and active life. She was a partner in first Headland Publications and later Tangent Books. Her poetry has appeared in a number of magazine and she recently completed the script of a novel. She married Geoff Brown in 1985. She died 13th August, 2000 in the South of France, a place she dearly loved. More poems by Vivienne and remembrances by her friends can be found at http://www.nhi.clara.net/z81.htm.

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