Canaan

My Grandmother 

is remembering something of herself— 

remembering herself, not someone else,

a confirmation of herself 

carrying a warm balance of milk 

down a country lane, with the sun pushing her

and the hedgerows tipsy with butterflies 

lemon butterflies

the colour of M. Proust's madeleines. 

Bees fizzing into life,

birds jabbering away like Canaanites— 

how you imagine Canaanites 

from Exodus: a land of milk and honey, 

diverse, until the Israelites arrived  

Every religion has the most powerful God,

the longest memory, the prettiest wife ....

But when Karl Radek, by default a Stalinist,

described Ulysses (as) 

'A heap of dung, crawling with worms,

photographed by a cinema apparatus

through a microscope -'

it wasn't intended as a compliment.