Skip to main content

poem on mothering sunday


THAT TIME REMEMBERED



Something about duty, about going into the sun

As if it was rare; something about not enough

Of basic things, too much information;

A recollection of locks, distance, and crowds

In parks as if they were safer. A sense the young

Were careless, indifferent, as they always are;

The old preparing for what they knew happens;

A time of waiting, as if the air raid sirens



Had just begun, but the shelters hadn’t yet

Flung open. Something else, connected to being

Apart, a decision we made to come together,

A grander union, after division bells, local anger;

Seriousness at a level you could hear in a stadium,

But they were shut. The image of someone holding

A pint glass, laughing at the figures on the telly;

Stocking up on boxed sets, brown rice, macaroni;



Wondering if the straps of your mask were right;

That clutching in the chest like holding on

To your last belongings; a gust of fight or flight.

More dying than had to, but that’s politics,

A retired nurse leaning over with exhausted fear,

Back for a final act of compromised immunity;

The blue ventilator wheezing, or was that her?

Funerals without mourners, that enclosing year.



22 March, 2020, London
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more