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Poem of the week: The Ancestors by Jackie Wills

<span>Photograph: Rene Schmidt/Alamy Stock Photo</span>
Photograph: Rene Schmidt/Alamy Stock Photo

The Ancestors

are having a summit –
they chase around the garden
disturbing hens.

Silver birches shake,
light shudders
in the branches.

The ancestors try on dresses
delivered by the centuries
they roam through like bandits.

When they speak
it’s with the yellow eyes
of a fox and clicks of an orca.

They wrestle, naked,
on the grass
for the best shoes.

Tomorrow they’re having a banquet
of possets and pears.
They sit on the table,

whistling Happy birthday,
promise to leave white dishes
at your door.

From her collection A Friable Earth, Jackie Wills’s gustily paced view of The Ancestors manages to combine cheerful anarchy with a sense of mystery. Because the poem’s title serves as the subject of the opening line, the ancestors’ appearance is immediate, and, although their identity is elusive, their activities continue centre-stage. The structure of short-lined tercets enhances the mystery by capturing the impulsive movement of these not-quite-visible beings, and the atmospheric disturbances they cause, notably to the light in stanza three.

Ancestors are honoured and respected in many religions, not least those of Africa. The poet has South African family connections, but this doesn’t seem to be a poem about ancestor worship. Neither does it directly relate to the current secular interest many people have in tracing their genealogy or the exploration of human evolution. It’s an impishly personal evocation of impish ancestors, time- and culture-travelling, a playful tall story. It reminds us how much imagination plays a part when we try to construct narratives of origin.

These evanescent and capricious beings may be tricksters, elves or even nature spirits. The poem’s speaker seems to have their measure, and a gentle irony is often discernible, especially at the beginning. What’s described as a “summit” is clearly not the kins of conference held by heads of state. Is it perhaps the case that the ancestors’ own idea of a summit is understood by the speaker to be different from ours? Perhaps she’s briefly pointing a finger at the covert disorganisations operating among the lawmakers at our human “summits”?

When they try on dresses which they’ve stolen from the different centuries, or “wrestle, naked, / on the grass / for the best shoes”, they might be rebellious, competitive women. The concern with dresses and shoes need not be gender-specific, though. These beings may simply represent liberated forms of the desire for physical adventure of various kinds. They indulge in banditry and naked wrestling and experiment with image. The poem leaves the matter of gender entirely open.

The ancestors lack human speech, and the fourth stanza gives a vivid impression of their means of communication “with the yellow eyes / of a fox and clicks of an orca”. They also turn out to have the capacity to whistle the tune of “Happy birthday”, as their summit devolves to a banquet. Their meal, consisting of “possets and pears”, is a bizarre mixture of the raw and the cooked. The narrator seems to be making fun of the way we humans view our ancestry, unavoidably interpreting it through a distorting modern cultural lens. The past we create for ourselves via our favourite family narratives is formed through an accumulation of happy misunderstandings, wishful fantasy and occasional fact.

It’s tempting to imagine the poem’s ancestors as animal-human hybrids. Ultimately, it seems they might be the kind of wild creatures who lick clean the dishes humans provide for them. Perhaps, when we leave food for the birds, hedgehogs and, dare I mention them, slugs and snails, we are taking part in a modern form of ancestor-worship? I like the element of reciprocity in the “promise” the ancestors make “to leave white dishes / at your door”.

The empty plate would also make an intriguing metaphor. Ancestors will limitlessly devour our interpretations of them, in that they seem to invite speculation about their mysterious and unpredictable behaviour. How did they behave in their lives, and how, as fantastical beings liberated by death, would they behave now? We can enjoy imagining all this, bringing those scraps of narrative into the present and weaving them into our own.