White lines and washboards

  Ett nytt kapitel i moderskapet och för andra gången hämtas texterna från antologin Motherhood : poems about mothers. Först ut kanadensiska Anne Carson och därefter Ruth (x2).

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Lines, by Anne Carson (f. 1950)
(From Motherhood : poems about mothers. Selected and edited by Carmela Ciuraru. New York : Knopf 2005.)

While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone.
Paper clips
in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the desk. She speaks
longingly
of death. I begin tilting all the paperclips in the other direction.

Out
the window snow is falling straight down in lines. To my mother,
love
of my life, I describe what I had for brunch. The lines are falling
faster
now. Fate has put little weights on the ends (to speed us up) I
want
to tell her—sign of God’s pity. She won’t keep me
(she is saying)
won’t run up my bill. Miracles slip past us. The
Paper clips
are immortally aligned. God’s pity! How long
will
it feel like burning, said the child trying to be
Kind.

***

Handbag, by Ruth Fainlight (f. 1931)
(From Motherhood : poems about mothers. Selected and edited by Carmela Ciuraru. New York : Knopf 2005.)

My mother's old leather handbag,
crowded with letters she carried
all through the war. The smell
of my mother's handbag: mints
and lipstick and Coty powder.
The look of those letters, softened
and worn at the edges, opened,
read, and refolded so often.
Letters from my father. Odour
of leather and powder, which ever
since then has meant womanliness,
and love, and anguish, and war.

***

In an iridescent time, by Ruth Stone (1915-2011)
(From Motherhood : poems about mothers. Selected and edited by Carmela Ciuraru. New York : Knopf 2005.)

My mother, when young, scrubbed laundry in a tub,
She and her sisters on an old brick walk
Under the apple trees, sweet rub-a-dub.
The bees came round their heads, the wrens made talk.
Four young ladies each with a rainbow board
Honed their knuckles, wrung their wrists to red,
Tossed back their braids and wiped their aprons wet.
The Jersey calf beyond the back fence roared;
And all the soft day, swarms about their pet
Buzzed at his big brown eyes and bullish head.
Four times they rinsed, they said. Some things they starched,
Then shook them from the baskets two by two,
And pinned the fluttering intimacies of life
Between the lilac bushes and the yew:
Brown gingham, pink, and skirts of Alice blue.