Do you know Romany names? The braided stories

of their syllables, the words cantering like Camargues

 

in a river? To rokker their honour is to ride through risk,

in the undertow of their hooved tromayimos.

 

The women of our camp stride between hedgerows

to your town with brimming baskets, voices low and proud.

 

Each of the women’s names is a chiriklo:

a lòlochìrillo, a ràrtigìllichal, a kàulochìrilo.

 

The stars are pegged out by the diminatsára.

The night has washed white the sheet of sky.

 

Every world is wrung out in the wind.

The children stream between the vardos, singing.

 

The women of our camp stride in their winters and summers.

Their skin is blossom, their eyes pârrâló as flowers.

 

They are chikalo and zuralo with washing their horses,

scrubbing buriyátsa from horse hooves, lugging wúzho pai

 

along dual carriageways while HGVs blare and snarl,

whirlpooling their skirts in the wake of wheels.

 

The women of our camp stride through the ginnels

of your town with baskets of pegs and heather-sprigs.

 

Esmerelda Hystead. Luminitsa Walker. Kibariye Kabanova.

Pattin Miskin. Yoska Small. Mermeyi Pesha.

 

Every Romany name is a gledála.

Every story is a mirror hurled at your world.

 

 

Romany: Fado: Song of Fate; rokker: speak of; tromayimos: threat; chiriklo: bird; lòlochìrillo: redpoll; ràrtigìllichal: nightingale; kàulochìrilo: blackbird; diminatsára: morning star; vardo: caravan; pârrâló: aflame; chikalo: mud-spattered; zuralo: strong; buriyátsa: fungus (thrush); wúzho pai: drinking water; gledála: reflection.

 

 

 

Esmerelda Hystead

 

I have washed my bairns in a clanking tin bath,

with pai from the rusty standpipe, sweetened

 

to tepid by the Calor’s blue flame. Gràdh mo chridhe.

How they flapped their wings in water, my angels,

 

their unclad limbs finger-tipping the night.

I plushed them in their Pampers and onesies.

 

I snuggled them in their knitted blue baby blankets.

I tucked them up in their one cradle like twined fates

 

sailing the kalisfériya in a crate of bones.

Rive open, ryat, and let them pass, poor bairns,

 

between spars of space like the children of Del.

Take them in passion, not vengeance for my flaws.

 

This was my prayer over my huddled babies.

I lifted their tin bath with its lolling water

 

and christened my boots with the slosh,

scouring my soles with a dandêngi-wûrtza.

 

The lanes are grimed with cowshit, trenched by tractors.

Lord, I have slogged this dromorro to death.

 

Where can I find the way where my vardo’s wheels

climb clean and true along the tracks of stars?

 

The planets spin like sugar lumps in my char

burned beneath by boiling it smoky on embers.

 

The stars spill like pennies kicked from a placky kuchi

by the gajo who passed me on the pavement where I begged all day.

 

Romany: pai: water; gràdh mo chridhe: darling of my heart (Scots Gaelic); kalisfériya: netherworld; ryat: night; Del: God; dandêngi-wûrtza: toothbrush; dromorro: path; vardo: caravan; char: tea; placky: plastic; kuchi: cup; gajo: non-Romany.

 

 

 

Luminitsa Walker

 

The spittle of the market traders spatters my coat.

I sop my mui and sing. The shopkeepers stare daggers.

 

They back into their doorways like calves in a barn

when the grastêngo swings by with his stun-gun.

 

Not one has the bollocks to block me. A nation

of tradesmen on speed-dial to the shingale.

 

The gavvers kettle the Travellers on the market square

The locals stand by gawking, piss-taking.

 

A roundup of Gyppos was what Ingerland voted for!

“Suspicion of behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress.”

 

These days, even suspicion can snatch you from the streets –

one phone call from a rasísto roused up to gibe Gypsies.

 

‘What is it, sir, are you “distressed”, “alarmed”? Or just “suspicious”?’

Officer, he were looking at me funny, and he talks forrin.

 

I thought we voted to send that lot back where they came from.

And the soft-brained sod pulls the Community Trigger.

 

A rai-baro logs the stat. The charge sheet states the case.

But the gavver has nothing on me but my race.

 

I pity the poor pênziyáko. An ashaval through his heart.

His gobbed-up good old days and Airfix spitfire fights.

 

He shudders like a shoshoi at the baxtalo of Gypsies.

I don’t want no grief. Be orf or I’m calling the police.

 

Serf to his daral, he squanders his pakivime.

Dust, dust, dust: the tread of the trashalo.

 

Romany: mui: face; grastêngo: knackerman; shingale: police; gavvers: police officers; rasísto: racist; rai-baro: senior police officer; pênziyáko: pensioner; ashaval: deadlock; shoshoi: rabbit; baxtalo: greeting; daral: fear; pakivime: respect/honour; trashalo: fearful.

 

 

 

Kibariye Kabanova

 

The paramichyári struts the stage of an arts festival.

He pockets a fee that could feed my kids for a sezóno.

 

My sons are wagging off school because big lads bully them,

calling them pikies, making their lives paklano.

 

‘Mrs. Kabanova, we’ve had a few complaints,’ says a teacher.

The support worker from the council calls by.

 

‘I’m here to help you,’ she says. ‘You’re just adding to it,’ I say.

She sends me – of all things – a paramichyári.

 

‘Tell me about your life,’ he says with a voice like meláiso.

‘I can’t write for toffee,’ I say, ‘but I speak for Travellers.

 

Our language is the harp I play tunes on.’

The storyteller pulls out a voice-recorder.

 

‘I won’t nick your words,’ he says, in his accent.

‘I want to write the truth about Travellers,’ he says.

 

I say, ‘The chachimos don’t make fancy art.’

‘I’d like to bring public awareness to your plight,’ he says.

 

‘You can start by hanging out my washing,’ I say.

‘Here’s a híro,’ I say. ‘My boy came home last month.

 

I’ve had enough, he said. I can’t take it, mam.

He killed himself next day in the woods. Them woods

 

down by the dóryav where the townies dump their stuff.’

I hang the tsáliya on the line and turn to the paramichyári.

 

‘Go on,’ I say. ‘I dare you. Tell his story.

Who tells my truth? A storyteller or me?’

 

 

Romany: paramichyári: storyteller; sezóno: season; paklano: hellish; meláiso: syrup; chachimos: truth; híro: tale; dóryav: river; tsáliya: clothes.

 

 

Pattin Miskin

 

My name means patrìn, an art of leaf and tree

which Roma place as a marker to tell their families

 

where they’ve gone, and where they mean to be.

Few can read them, this word-work of the wêrsh,

 

a letter torn from the pages of leaves,

scrunched into the crannies of a drystone múro

 

by the lane’s corner on the turnpike of the sun

where the pheasant rasps like a rusty hinge at dawn.

 

Winter rain shreds my words. The hornbooks of bark

rot into lúmiya under the wheel-spray of trucks.

 

My tongue sheds its shib, my latticed leaf of speech.

I reach out to you, palms grained by graft,

 

my arms arching to clasp nuthatches and treecreepers.

The pine marten weaves his drey from my hair.

 

I dreamed in fire and ice. I woke in rain and ash.

I am the patrìn pawed by vryámya. I cannot rise

 

from where I was dumped, half-hidden under stone

with kicked-up chik choking my throat.

 

They took my tongue and tráyo, spread-eagled me,

struck the shib from my mouth, raped me by the hedge

 

while tourist coaches hissed and settled in the layby

and day-trippers gawped at the quaintness of our camp.

 

They buried me, shallow, in the wushal of the wall. 

In the shadow of you all: I, Pattin Miskin, am the message.

 

 

Romany: patrìn: symbol or signpost left for travellers made from leaves and twigs; wêrsh: forest; múro: wall; lúmiya: earth; shib: speech or tongue; skwártsa: bark; vryámya: weather; chik: muck or mud; tráyo: life; wushal: shadow.

 

 

 

Yoska Small

 

Christmas Day. The dawn is sure and quick and blue.

I toss the xalayimos on the line and place my pot of cyclamen

 

where it glimmers and grows and drinks the winter light.

The camp is mad with music. The moon’s lamp glitters.

 

A chirikli-ratyás warms up his wintered song.

Boxing Day. My kids skip off at zóri and leg it to the tip,

 

quick to the queue before the food bankers show up,

to beg the bed-frame that grandfather spied

 

among the heaven of unwanted things,

the cast-offs and the grown out of. The sorry mess.

 

The asamos of children smiling over broken bikes,

trodden toys, rain-sodden teddies, plastic play kitchens.

 

Imagine the endless Christmas of the recycling yard,

its lolloping wonders and rain-splattered relics

 

of every toy those parents chose and wrapped.

Their love lies open in the landfill of their lives.

 

I want to make an afterlife of things

to gather gifts under my vardo like eggs

 

as though my wheeled house were huddled like a hen

over hope’s nest, and each day was Christmas Day

 

for children of the light and of the dark.

The dawn is sure and quick and blue.

 

I am Yoska Small. My name means gift.

Rubbish, people call it. I call it love.

 

 

Romany: xalayimos: wet wash; chirikli-ratyáki: nightingale; zóri: first light; asamos: laughter; vardo: caravan.

 

 

 

 

Mermeyi Pesha

 

I am a caravan. The eye of my door open to the vryámya.

The Travellers douse me with benzína. I am unclean.

 

I died when my owner died in me. Mermeyi was barely zhívindo

when the Gypsies cut her down and carried her into me.

 

They laid her on the ponyévi by my stove. Kibariye nursed her.

Esmeralda phoned a dóftoro who didn’t show.

 

Then the shingale swarmed over the site, with nagging notepads

pushing it that one of our own killed her. They did not search me.

 

I am a caravan. I cradled Mermeyi in my arms through night and day.

I watched her môritimós deepen to dark. I heard her mind warp.

 

Her husband Jacko worked year-round hauling palettes

to the edgelands of wild England. A baro was Jacko.

 

Mermeyi married him at fifteen. She loved him like life.

He’d come and go. Spent more time with his truck than his wife.

 

The truck’s my living, he’d say, revving the matóra, showing off.

The next day Jacko would be gone. Trucking was his true love.

 

You even sleep with that thing, Mermeyi said.

I sleep in it, he shouted. Same difference, she cried.

 

News came that Jacko had another wife. I won’t leave him,

said Mermeyi, even though he’s lashed me with shame.

 

I am a caravan. My walls closed around my darling in the dark.

Luminitsa and Yoska hammered at my wudar.

 

The moon had washed white the sheets of the day.

The tree where Mermeyi was hanging was yards away.

 

 

Romany: vryámya: weather; benzína: petrol; zhívindo: conscious; ponyévi: blankets; dóftoro: doctor; shingale: police; môritimós: marriage (of a woman); baro: big man; matóra: engine; wudar: door.

 

 

 

 

Fado

 

Mermeyi Pesha. Yoska Small. Pattin Miskin.

Kibariye Kabanova. Luminitsa Walker. Esmerelda Hystead.

 

Their names are hushed music like a lark before it sings.

Yet you will not greet them, give them a good morning.

 

You dread their curse, the plague-cross of their frown.

Nothing today! you mouth through your double glazing.

 

You scorn them because you were born blessed, raised slyer,

blighted by the memory your kin were once striders.

 

Your fathers roamed the droms of beggared England,

fossicked for shillings in hop fields and hedgerows.

 

Your mothers rode vardos, dozed beneath tarp.

Home-chained changeling, you sold yourself for scrap.

 

You forgot you were a sparrowhawk spiralling with the lark.

Your wolfhound wept wolf. You lay down with the lamb.

 

Hulisto tele a húlyo hai xutildyas le shoshes.

How the eagle swept down to snatch your soul!

 

Scram to your burrow, fox-frit, frittering years in your home.

The paramíchi of your hero mothers stand over you in shame.

 

 

Romany: Fado: Song of Fate; droms: roads; vardos: caravans; Hulisto tele a húlyo hai xutildyas le shoshes: ‘How the eagle swoops down to claim the rabbit’; param