Portrait of a Lady
Each time I visit her
the house is a little more grimy.
Fur is growing on the plaited flex
from which the light-bulb hangs
and the lino is stickier under foot.
she makes a space for me
on the sofa, amid the jumble
of newspapers and knitting,
letters and photographs.
She giggles and pats a cushion, inviting me to sit.
She makes me a cup of tea,
fussing over how much milk
I like and whether I take sugar
(she’s so sorry she doesn’t remember),
and will I have a biscuit?
Every step has to be dithered over,
with a furtive glance,
a wry shrug and a propitiating smile
at every fumble, every spillage
and even at the jangle of spoon on saucer
till at last we sit and sip together
and can talk.
Or rather, she talks. I still
can’t quite get in step with the
rhythm of her monologue
and choose the wrong moment
to speak, my interruption jarring her,
leaving her puzzled
at having lost her place, and me
feeling clumsy for not seeming to listen.
But she will not take offence.
She apologises for talking too much
and for losing her drift, and gathers up her thoughts
as maladroitly as when, with arthritic fingers,
she scrambles for her fallen knitting,
and then she’s off again - so kind,
so deferential to me,
so deprecating about herself,
so forgiving of others, so horrified
at the world and its suffering.
The twitching grins,
the nervous bobbing of the head,
the hands that fidget constantly
with knitting,
the exhausting cheerfulness -
I would not call these courage
or even fortitude,
for that would imply the possibility
of a sort of triumph, and for her
there will be none.
Her wish has always been
to please the world or,
failing that,
at least to appease it,
but it’s hopeless,
the world’s remorseless,
and is sealing her up
in a living tomb of her own detritus.
Soon, the rivers of her memory will silt up
and the arteries clog and fail.
Page(s) 52-53
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The