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Hairless

By Jo Shapcott Jo Shapcott

Can the bald lie? The nature of the skin says not:

it's newborn-pale, erection-tender stuff,

every thought visible,—pure knowledge,

mind in action—shining through the skull.

I saw one, a woman, hairless absolute, cleaning.

She mopped the green floor, dusted bookshelves,

all cloth and concentration, Queen of the moon.

You can tell, with the bald, that the air

speaks to them differently, touches their heads

with exquisite expression. As she danced

her laundry dance with the motes, everything

she ever knew skittered under her scalp.

It was clear just from the texture of her head,

she was about to raise her arms to the sky;

I covered my ears as she prepared to sing, roar,

to let the big win resonate in the little room.

Source: Poetry (June 2004).

Biography

SHAPCOTT, Jo (1953– ), was born in London, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and later won a Harkness Fellowship to Harvard. She has worked as Education Officer at the South Bank Centre, and for the Arts Council Literature Department. Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1988) won the Commonwealth Prize, and her second, Phrase Book (Oxford, 1992) was a Poetry Book . . .

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