Mother of many children

  Det blir en ny titt i antologin Mothersongs. Den här gången har jag valt två dikter ur avsnittet som har rubriken "Silver threads : The aging mother".

Louisa Van Velsor Whitman
(Mother of Walt Whitman and eight other children)

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  Walt Whitman föddes 31 maj 1819 i området West Hills på Long Island i New York. Han var föräldrarna Walter och Louisas andra barn. Fadern hade engelskt påbrå och modern holländskt. När Walt Whitman var tre år flyttade familjen till Brooklyn som då var en liten stad med omkring 7000 invånare. Han gick i skola från år 1825 (möjligtvis tidigare) till 1830. I Brooklyns District School No.1 som låg på Concord och Adams Street fick han lära sig att skriva och räkna, samt geografi. Whitman lämnade skolan när han var elva och fick ingen mer formell skolning. 
Källa: Walt Whitman, by David S. Reynolds. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.

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The old face of the mother of many children, by Walt Whitman
(From Mothersongs : poems for, by, and about mothers. Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Diana O'Hehir. New York : W.W. Norton, 1995.)

The old face of the mother of many children, 
Whist! I am fully content.

Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning, 
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, 
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the
        catbrier under them.

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree, 
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white 
        froth and the water-blue. 

Behold a woman! 
She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer 
        and more beautiful than the sky.

She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the                       farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, 
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters 
        spun it with the distaff and the wheel.

The melodious character of the earth, 
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and 
        does not wish to go, 
The justified mother of men.

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  Ruth Whitman (1922-1999) var en amerikansk poet, översättare och professor. Hennes åttonde och sista bok blev Hatshepshut, Speak to me (Wayne State University Press, 1992), och som hennes mest kända verk betraktas Tamsen Donner: A Woman’s Journey (Alice James Books, 1977). Hon översatte också poesi från jiddisch, och skrev det älskvärda poemet "Sisters". Källa: Wikipedia

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Eightythree, by Ruth Whitman
(From Mothersongs : poems for, by, and about mothers. Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Diana O'Hehir. New York : W.W. Norton, 1995.)

My mother sits on a towel
on the toilet seat. I dip a cloth
into lukewarm suds and wash her face and neck,
her dry, crevassed neck.

She says, "Sometimes I feel as dark and alone
as before I was born."

I wash her arms, her elbows, the crooks of her elbows,
her underarms.

"That feels good," she says.

I wash her back round and fleshy, the tired
breasts, her belly broad and generous as an old
Renoir. I wash her buttocks, those large apples,
so like my own.

She says, "I'm no good for anybody,
not even for myself."

I wash her thighs and knees, her gnarled toes,
pat her dry, rub her all over with oil.

She says, "Am I your baby?"