Now that I have read past the long conceit-ish use of metaphor in the opening lines of David Dabydeen's Molly and the Muslim Stick, which didn't quite work for me, I believe I've found other images that work. These appear less like a metaphysical poem, and more like what I expect in a novel: a narrative I can follow without too many brow-knitting interruptions, thank you. Tell me what you think about this:
I was nearly thirty before I broke free from my father, going away from Accrington to the Leeds Institute to train to become a teacher of English. Up till then I stayed at home cleaning. Cleaning from the time my mother sickened. Cleaning the kitchen, the hallway, the stairs, the daily deposits of colliery dust, and the bath -- especially the bath, our family being among the privileged few who owned a modern one. My father had bought it brand new with the earnings from my mother's clairvoyance business. A huge deep enamel thing, which our neighbours used to marvel at when my father allowed them in to bathe. In 1940, when a flotilla of sailing boats set off for Dunkirk, they said, "Oi, Norman, if you put to sea you could rescue half the bloody British army in one of these." And my father beamed in pride at the bright vessel in the house. When my mother died a year later he no longer cared for it, choosing to wash in the back garden with bucket and tin cup. It was I who cleaned it every day, to keep alive the memory of my mother. Polishing, I was always polishing, first her crystal ball, then when she was laid out, I polished her eyes so that the neighbours could see in their sheen evidence of her gift of prophesy. Death and burial, but the polishing didn't end, for there was my nemesis, the bath. It had been acquired under questionable circumstances, and when I rubbed it with a white cloth I was wiping away her sins, preparing her soul for the safety of heaven, far away from her lies (were they lies or occasional flashes of insight?), the colliery grime (real enough and regular), the mills' cacophony, the blare of Salvation Army trumpets at the end of the street, drunken wagoners spilling their loads clatteringly on the pavements, the rapture and rowdiness of football crowds... the experiences of my childhood abbreviated for Terence's delectation, Terence the gentle boy from the elegance of Graston, a leafy Kent village. Accrington, my home town -- he liked the name, the hurtfulness of it. It was like eating grit and cracking your teeth. Axe. Crud. Rind. Arid. Acrid. Acid. Cringe. Terence would chew upon the harshness of my upbringing, savouring my hurt. Afterwards he would polish my body with his tongue until I felt comely and sylvan ...
