Nyligen fyllde jag år, hur mycket är fullständigt ointressant. Faktiskt funderar jag mer över åldrandet när barnen fyller år, än jag gör vid min högtidsdag.
För drygt fyra år sedan tillfrågade Carol Ann Duffy några poetkollegor om de kunde tänka sig att skriva var sin dikt om åldrandet. Det resulterade i en lång artikel, med 16 dikter, som publicerades i The Guardian, 13 mars 2010. Dagens Måndagsklubb lyfter fram tre av dessa.
Vi börjar med Wales nationalpoet Gillian Clarke.
Blue Hydrangeas, September / by Gillian Clarke (f. 1937)
You bring them in, a trug of thundercloud,
neglected in long grass and the sulk
of a wet summer. Now a weight of wet silk
in my arms like her blue dress, a load
of night-inks shaken from their hair –
her hair a flame, a shadow against light
as long ago she leaned to kiss goodnight
when downstairs was a bright elsewhere
like a lost bush of blue hydrangeas.
You found them, lovely, silky, dangerous,
their lapis lazulis, their indigoes
tide-marked and freckled with the rose
of death, beautiful in decline.
I touch my mother's skin. Touch mine.
***
Ibland är steget inte långt, i bloggen blott en mening, från hortensior (Hydrangeas på engelska) till björnbär.
Liselott among the blackberries, by Gerda Mayer (f. 1927)
Caught on September's
blackberry hook,
her hands reach out
for the sweet dark fruit;
wholly under
the blackberry spell.
"Hurry up, Lieselott,
it is late." (Plenty
of time! She
feigns deaf and dawdles.)
Old woman tasting
the last of the fruit,
in sunny oblivion,
in a still brightness.
***
Dagens avslutande dikt är lite längre, men så välskriven att jag valde att återge den i sin helhet. Den är skriven av Anne Stevenson, som förekom i Måndagsklubben i maj med dikten "The spirit is too blunt an instrument". Hennes dikt om åldrande innehåller både klokhet, humor och vacker rytmik.
The password, by Anne Stevenson (f. 1933)
For Peter
Memory, intimate camera, inward eye,
Open your store, unlock your silicon
And let my name's lost surfaces file by.
What password shall I type to turn you on?
Is this the girl who bicycled to school
A cello balanced on her handlebars?
Shy, but agog for love, she played the fool
And hid her poems in the dark of drawers.
First love of music bred a love of art,
Then art a love of actors and their plays,
Then actors love of acting out a part,
Until she'd try on anything for praise.
Siphoned to England, she embraced her dream,
With Mr Darcy camped in Hammersmith,
Bathed in a kitchen tub behind a screen,
Pretending love was true and life a myth.
Waking with a baby on her hip,
Yeats in her shopping basket, here she is,
Thin as a blade and angry as a whip,
Weighing her gift against her selfishness.
Three husbands later, here she is again,
Opposed to her own defiance, breaking rules.
Not mad, not micro-waved American,
She trips on sense, and falls between two stools,
Finding herself at sixty on the floor,
With childhood's sober, under-table view
Of how in time love matters more and more.
Given a creeping deadline, what to do?
Look at the way her wild pretensions end.
One word, its vast forgiving coverage,
Validates all her efforts to defend
Every excuse she makes, and warms with age.
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