Her many books include poetry, short stories, translations, drama and opera libretti. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and her stories in books including The Penguin Book of Modern Women’s Stories (1991) and Caught in a Story: contemporary fairy-tales and fables (Vintage, 1992).

Her poetry books include Cages (1966) and To See the Matter Clearly (1968), from MacMillan in Britain and Dufour in the USA; The Region’s Violence (1973), Another Full Moon (1976), Sibyls and Others (1980), Fifteen to Infinity (1983), Selected Poems (1987) and The Knot (1990), all from Hutchinson and Century Hutchinson; This Time of Year (1994) and Selected Poems (1995) from Sinclair-Stevenson; and Climates (1983), Sugar-Paper Blue (1997) and Burning Wire (2002) from Bloodaxe Books. Fifteen to Infinity was published in the USA by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Sugar-Paper Blue was listed for the Whitbread Poetry Award.

She has also translated two books of poetry from the Portuguese of Sophia de Mello Breyner, and collaborated with Alan Sillitoe on a translation of Lope de Vega’s play All Citizens Are Soldiers (Macmillan, 1969). Her own poetry has been published in Portuguese (1995), French (1997) and Spanish (2000) editions.

She has published two collections of short stories, Daylife and Nightlife (André Deutsch, 1971) and Dr. Clock’s Last Case (Virago, 1994). Her libretti include: The Dancer Hotoke (1991), a chamber opera by Erika Fox (nominated for the Laurence Olivier Awards in 1992); The European Story (1993), a chamber opera for Geoffrey Alvarez; and Bedlam Britannica (1995), a Channel Four War Cries TV opera directed by Celia Lowenstein with music by Robert Jan Stips.

(from the book Burning Wire)

Portugal: Visitação, de Ruth Fainlight, Tradução colectiva (Mateus, Abril-Maio 1994), revista, completada e apresentada por Ana Hatherly, Livros Quetzal, ISBN: 9725642279, 1995, 54 pág.

Lisbon Faces

The cats on the azulejos

on the Fronteira palace,

the putti, birds and satyrs –

cobalt blue and manganese

black, with yellow eyes,

the fishermen and monks, Jews

and courtiers, the royal pair

with ornate rich-toned robes,

honouring São Vicente

in Nuno Gonçalves’ painting,

have a subtle resemblance – that

shrewd, mournful, watchful expression –

to people I passed in Alfama

this morning: they all share

the same Lisbon face.

 from Burning Wire                

Young Men

Young men disturb me as they never used to –

a sharply physical disturbance, with full

awareness that stiff joints and slack flesh

no longer could perform what I imagine;

mind and body

                                   moving further apart.

I feel a tenderness and sympathy

for old body, that poor donkey, most

burdens too heavy now, though once little

seemed beyond it; ruefully acknowledge

how only rage and lust

                                   augment with time.

Whether mind becomes more tolerant

to repetition of the same absurdities,

nothing learned, is a moot point.

But those young men – ought I to want

the day ever to come

                                   when they don’t disturb?

from Sugar-Paper Blue                  

The Tree Surgeon

Pressing against the trunk, he twists around
and back to test the resilience of the branch,
the rope, the safety of his position,
then crawls along a bough – a primate
in his habitat. When he stops to rest and
contemplate the distracting criss-cross of last
season's twigs, plot his next move and where
to cut yet not harm the tree's structure,
he becomes a modern human.

Next spring it will start again. By autumn,
when this year's leaves have fallen, the space
he's cleared will be filigreed with new growth.
The pressure of a tool on his palm, the timeless
repetitions of toil, seem part of the same
process – something more important than
an individual life. He's caring for trees,
not carving a sculpture that will immortalize
him; would never conceive such ambitions.

At ground level, two men, helmetted,
their ears muffled against the sound, feed
fallen branches through the mouth of a hopper
that spits the shredded stuff into the open back
of a truck. The tree surgeon, gracefully
stretching toward the tip of the tallest branch,
is only not an artist because he knows
that what he does could be done as well –
or maybe even better – by someone else.

Pressing against the trunk, he twists around
and back to test the resilience of the branch,
the rope, the safety of his position,
then crawls along a bough – a primate
in his habitat. When he stops to rest and
contemplate the distracting criss-cross of last
season's twigs, plot his next move and where
to cut yet not harm the tree's structure,
he becomes a modern human.

Next spring it will start again. By autumn,
when this year's leaves have fallen, the space
he's cleared will be filigreed with new growth.
The pressure of a tool on his palm, the timeless
repetitions of toil, seem part of the same
process – something more important than
an individual life. He's caring for trees,
not carving a sculpture that will immortalize
him; would never conceive such ambitions.

At ground level, two men, helmetted,
their ears muffled against the sound, feed
fallen branches through the mouth of a hopper
that spits the shredded stuff into the open back
of a truck. The tree surgeon, gracefully
stretching toward the tip of the tallest branch,
is only not an artist because he knows
that what he does could be done as well –
or maybe even better – by someone else.

from Burning Wire                        

Ancient Egyptian Couples

Ancient Egyptian couples
standing or seated side by side.
Plaited wigs and pleated robes
breastplates and bracelets patterned
with lotus and papyrus buds
in wood, stone, plaster,
meticulously worked and incised.

Signifying separate realms,
his skin is painted
earth red, hers gleams soft
and golden as the sky.

Sometimes, the wife has placed a hand
upon her husband's shoulder.
They stare at us, not at each other,
from enormous kohl-rimmed eyes.

That surge of affection
across millennia, like
the sudden return of desire
which haloes the head, the whole
body, of the one confirmed
again as beloved, brings them
close as you and I.

from Sugar-Paper Blue                  

Handbag

My mother's old leather handbag,
crowded with letters she carried
all through the war. The smell
of my mother's handbag: mints
and lipstick and Coty powder.
The look of those letters, softened
and worn at the edges, opened,
read, and refolded so often.
Letters from my father. Odour
of leather and powder, which ever
since then has meant womanliness,
and love, and anguish, and war.

from Fifteen to Infinity, 1983                

MALA DE MÃO

A velha carteira de cabedal da minha mãe

atulhada das cartas que andaram

com ela durante a guerra. O cheiro

da carteira da minha mãe: mentol

e bâton e pó de arroz Coty.

O aspecto dessas cartas, amolecidas

e gastas no cantos, tantas vezes

abertas, lidas e dobradas.

Cartas do meu pai. Um cheiro

a cabedal e pó de arroz, que

desde então quer dizer mulher,

amor, sofrimento e guerra.

De "Visitação"

Four Pheasants

Where the road curves sharp left, it dips,
and after heavy rain, a glisten of wet —
what might be the bed of an old stream or
an overflowing spring — marks the surface.
The water sinks into the dark earth
deepened by centuries of rotting leaves
and decomposing creatures, and the trees arch.
Their top branches meet above the gap.

When the leaves are russet and gold, the wet road,
fiftully lit by weak sunlight filtered through
interlaced twigs, seems to lead somewhere important.
From a bank of bronze and copper bracken,
dew-beaded, frost-softened, four pheasants
emerge, one behind the next, and stalk across.

from Burning Wire                

Sunday Afternoon

A Sunday afternoon in late July:

the leaves look tired, the sky is clouding up,

pressure falling. The couple

in the next apartment are arguing

about how much he does or doesn't help.

Eavesdropping from my terrace,

I am jealous of how it's bound to end:

the stuffy bedroom, moans and love-cries muffled

so the baby won't wake.

I remember every detail of

the misery there is in marriage - and then making up.

from Burning Wire                

Inward
 

Her eyes are staring inward
into a space as endless
as the distance from here to the mountains

she has forgotten. Between
those peaks and this high cave
lies the drowned valley floor where it happened:

whatever gave her the look
of a violated woman
or a bird that clings to a storm-struck mast

and made everything fade--
like being formed from clay and breathed
into life. Or a god's visitation

from This Time of Year             

December Moon

Like the web of a leaf - fine as the mesh
of a moth's crest or a filigreed
blade of coral - that I'd stoop to peel
from the damp pavement and carry home
(another object for my collection)
in spite of Mother's protestations

like a scrap of lace on the blue carpet
of her cool bedroom, that lay unnoticed
since I cut and hemmed a veil for my doll
from a torn scarf (or perhaps to knot
around my neck for dressing-up)

like the wrinkled skin my mother would scrape
so carefully with a little spoon
from the top of my cup of boiled milk
(which unless she did I wouldn't drink)

and watch her drop it onto that plate -
my favourite - with a painted line
around the rim like autumn trees
against a sky (it's not that long
since the leaves fell) of the same

rare December blue as the morning sky
I see today here when I draw
the curtains apart, and this pale moon,
half consumed by the last month
of another year, floats into view.

 from Burning Wire                

Ephemeral Lives

This year seems an interlude
between two events, though I don't yet know
what those events are. The first
must already have happened (at the time
I didn't notice), but until the second,
whenever it comes, the future stays obscure.

A week now is as short as a day,
a month no longer than a week used to be.
The only way to stop acceleration
(this hopeful theory still needs testing)
would be to concentrate my attention
on the smallest details of a fly, a mouse,
a flower. Compared to such ephemeral lives,
my own will proceed with glacial slowness.

 from Burning Wire                

Agua de Colónia

The sharp smell of cheap eau-de-cologne,

agua de colonia, will call it back:

every aspect of the lonely summer

in that other era, when I was young.

Watered pavements of narrow streets between

old buildings. Dim high-ceilinged cafés blue

with smoke from yellow-papered cigarettes.

The almost neutral taste of almond horchata

in tall glass beaded with moisture. I pressed

my wrists against its sides to cool my blood.

Molten sunlight through the shutter slats

corrodes the floor-tiles’ lozenges and arabesques.

Insomnia under a mosquito net.

My scent. My languor. My formal clothing.

 from Sugar-Paper Blue          

AGUA DE COLONIA*

O cheiro forte de eau-de-cologne barata
(agua de colónia)*, há-de recordá-lo:
cada aspecto do solitário verão
nessa outra época, quando eu era jovem.

Calçadas regadas de ruas estreitas entre
velhos edifícios. Cafés sombrios de tectos altos, azulados
com o fumo dos cigarros de mortalha amarela.
O gosto quase neutro de orchata de amêndoa
num copo alto embaciado. Pressionei
nele os pulsos para arrefecer o meu sangue.

A luz solar difundida através das ripas das persianas
corrói os losangos e arabescos dos ladrilhos do chão.
A insónia sob a rede de um mosquiteiro.
O meu odor. A minha languidez. O meu vestuário formal.

SUGAR-PAPER BLUE

I

Trying to describe a colour

by comparison and metaphor

is as futile as the attempt

to hum the tune I hear in my head.

But I thought everyone knew

what was meant by sugar-paper blue.

Sugar-paper – that thickish, stiffish

somewhat-grainy-surfaced, mottled

faded-navy paper glued or folded

into bags for sugar: the next image

is my aunt and mother stocky-fingered

in the family grocery store.

After school, pushing a metal scoop

through the shifting granular dampness

inside a hairy sack of jute,

they’ll find bags, then to their homework.

            You understand, there is no proof

            this actually occurred.

I was trying to describe a room in Leningrad (in ‘65

still the city’s name), walls painted

the traditional nineteenth-century tone

I called sugar-paper blue,

to a friend in New York, years later.

II

It was the study of my guide’s parents,

two polite Petersborgians

who had survived the siege,

their daughters said, with bodies gaunt

and eyes enormous as Rublev saints

on icons at the Hermitage (“That’s 

how we all looked”), and now, proudly,

showed books, albums, pamphlets

guarded through terrible years.

I turned the pages of thick or flimsy paper,

thought of those writers and artists

gone to the gulags or Paris, and knew

that I was touching holy relics.

“Here’s Mandelstam’s first published verse,” Galya

translated. “These woodcuts are by Goncharova.

And look: Blok. Bely. Gumilev.”

“The Acmeist who married Akhmatova?”

(I was such a show-off). “Yes,” they confirmed.

“And this is the book with the cycle of poems

dedicated to her by Marina Tsvetaeva”

            - who titled them The Muse, and later said:

            “I read as if Akhmatova

            were the only person in the room.

            I read for the absent Akhmatova”,

            - who didn’t hear them, but carried the manuscript

            in her handbag for years, until

            it split at the folds and fell apart.

III

I was probably not more than twelve then,

in my aunt’s glass-fronted mahogany bookcase –

            dusting its elaborated clawed feet,

            the swagged garlands of leaves swathing

            the hips of the female torsos

            that surged from the column each side

            like naked caryatidis, or

            twin figureheads with the fixed eyes

            and stern faces of implacable Fates

            on the vessel of expectation

            which that bookcase (the same piece now

            in my London apartment; the one object

            whose look and contents, I suspect,

            formed my taste in everything) became –

I found what can only be called

“a slim volume”, with limp covers,

in an unknown script and language.

I don’t remember Aunt Ann translating

one line from its pages, nor ever

explaining how she came to own it.

But she told me some facts about the woman

who wrote it – the first time I heard

those words: Anna Akhmatova –

            later, I wondered how important

            the coincidence of name might be for her,

            my aunt, who since the sugar-bagging days

            saw herself an artist-manqué;

IV

“You are and admirer of Akhmatova?”

It was a loaded question, then.

Faces gleaming white against the dark

blue walls and shelves of books

as marble busts in a library,

all three watched me closely.

“You know I don’t read Russian. But

there are a few translations – “

I couldn’t go on. I felt ridiculous.

“She’s ill now,” Galya said,

“but still in touch with everything.

And what a good neighbour”.

A neighbour? Hard to imagine her

in such a mundane situation.

Like the taut silk of a parachute

collapsing inward, billowed out,

by contrary winds, the barriers

of time and space changed shape and meaning.

“Do you hear that sound?” My gaze followed

Galya’s to the ceiling. “She must be

better today, she’s walking around”.

“Anna Akhmatova lives upstairs?”

My awestruck, disbelieving voice

creaked like the floorboards.

V

Incredulous questions:

as if needing to hear the simple fact

reiterated yet again;

pleading that somehow they help me

to meet the famous poet,

the witness,

the sacred monster,

the old, dying woman –

                                   or at least

            help me to see her –

            even if only over the shoulder

            of one of them – who could knock

            at her door and let me look

            even if only a moment –

            just to see her – a glimpse –

            Anna Akhmatova:

                                   my obsessed

demand exceeded decent behaviour.

But they firmly insisted, repeating,

as many times as I asked, that what

I wanted could not happen.

VI

I have scanned encyclopaedias

and dictionaries, read every entry

under “sugar” and “paper” and “blue”:

endless, tedious searchings. But no one

acknowledges the relevance

of those qualifiers, or recognises

the description, though I see it

so clearly: a glaucous sheen

ob the cheap, thick sheets of paper.

            Mandelstam – I hadn’t read him

            then – might have written

            of sugar cones from North Africa,

            but eating blue grapes

            under “the burning blue sky”

            os Tashkent, did Akhmatova notice

            one wrapped in blue paper?

(As for “papier bleu”, in White Flock

I found it: “the blue copy-book

with the poems I wrote as a child”.)

There are other more poetic blues:

azure, cerulean, lapis lazuli,

ultramarine, cornflower, indigo;

(the colour of rivers and ocean,

the shadows on ice and snow).

But my imagination

stubbornly returns

to my aunt and mother,

Feigele and Channah – Fanny and Annie –

unhappily filling packets of sugar

(while sucking the crystal residue).

            It’s not as if they came from Russia.

            Somewhere near Bukovina

            was where they were born.

It is impossible to say:

standing side by side in the damp room

behind the store – like sisters

in a Dostoievsky novel –

their chilblained hands and feet

burned as blue with cold

as Anna Akhmatova’s

heart, mind, soul, body,

or allude to the janitor’s blue cap,

or the blue lips

of the woman who whispered,

“Can you describe this?”

as she stood in line

three hundred hours

With the other mothers, wives and sisters

outside Kresty prison.

Is it shameful or shameless

that I can’t disentangle the stories?

            How they all must have yearned

            for something to sweeten their mouths,

            or had they forgotten

            even the taste of sugar?

VII

Poetry, maternal figure. Sugar syrup, blue paper.

The Muse: a veiled girl with pipes in her hand.

Cassandra: “…my rods prophesied those graves”.

            sugar syrup, blue paper

“Not quite a harlot, burning with passion;

not quite a nun, who can pray for forgiveness.”

            sugar syrup, blue paper

Orthodox Russian village women pilgrims.

Michal, Rachel, all the daughters of Israel.

            sugar syrup, blue paper

“They are very nice when they are courting”.

The face of a child with divorced parents.

            sugar syrup, blue paper

“Hiding her heart” from her husband,

drinking to “loneliness spent together”.

            sugar syrup, blue paper

“Everyone looks through a foreign window.

One in Tashkent, another in New York.”

            Poetry.

            Maternal figure.

            Sugar syrup.

            Blue paper.

VIII

I wanted to see her.

I wanted to be initiated.

Like a hungry animal

wanting to push its muzzle

into the sticky, blue-sugar secrets

of suffering and poetry,

to lick the gritty essence of love

from the palms of her hand:

such were my ignorant, urgent demands.

The vibration of footsteps,

the sense of a body’s bulk and weight

displacing space, the mystery

existing, alive and breathing

above my head, were maddening.

            There was then – my first trip to Russia –

            after letting me talk, and spin a rope

            of hopeless platitudes more than

            long enough to hang myself,

            a stranger said: “If you ever come back,

            then I’ll tell you how really is”.

            Glad to join our party – the table already

            covered with half-empty bottles and glasses –

            he then revealed he’d last seen his father

            in the witness box at the Doctors’ Plot trial.

            Unsure if there would be a next visit,

            his wife murmured, “Murdered”, in my ear.

Remembering this, I had the childish wish

to take the misery of the century

compact it to a small black stone</