Shocks

When I first read this poem unaware of the poetess and her work, I found it more or less stupid. A story of two kids touching a cable. After some careful reading though I was totally impressed. Sprackland actually constructs a very strong friendship of two children ie they share their secrets, they narrate stories, in general things that are usual in early friendships. The peak of the poem lies on the third part. There Jane reassures the   poetess that the french is not on although the poetess herself can hear the electricity. The poetess trusts her friend and touches the cable. This is her first shock: both a shock to her body and an emotional shock because of the first betrayal.  Going back to the first verse we can see that the words thrills, charge, cracking can be read both with a literal and a metaphorical meaning. The gist of the poem is the problems of human friendships and relationships.

About Sprackland, she has won the Eliot prize for her autobiographical and flashback poems.

Shocks

Remember those first thrills, the charge

that went cracking through you?

Sunday afternoons we went out on our bikes,

me and next-door Julie.

She had black ringlets and a wicked smile.

We crossed the dual carriageway

like small determined animals swimming a swollen river.

Then out into the lanes. A dappled horse

shambled hopefully towards the gate.

We dropped our bikes on the verge,

took out apple cores and polo mints.

We pretended this was why we'd come.

We perched on the gate,

picking scabs of rust and telling secrets:

the time Derek Wesley saw a dead man

in the old air-raid shelter. The little packets

Julie found in her dad's wardrobe.

She always made the first move,

casual and bold by the electric fence.

She bet me anything it wasn't on.

Touch it. I dare you. I said it first.

The blood jittered in my fingertips,

my throat. I thought I could hear the current

singing in the cable. I reached out.

                  Jean Sprackland, from Hard Water (2003)

                   Tινάγματα
Θυμάσαι εκείνα πρώτα τρεμουλιάσματα,
που ράγισαν μέσα σου;
Τις κυριακές το απόγευμα πηγαίναμε έξω,
εγώ και η γετόνισσα της διπλανής πόρτας η Τζούλι.
Είχε μαύρες μπούκλες και ένα κακό χαμόγελο.