The speaker remembers how their grandmother dated their birth not by a standard calendar but through nearby events: four moons after a flood that killed half the town, twelve moons before a church was dynamited, two moons after the grapes ripened. As a child, they did not even know the official date, 1st October 1963, until starting school. The poem contrasts two ways of telling time. A standard date is precise but empty, while the grandmother’s method turns a birthday into shared history, tied to disaster, political violence, and the seasons. There is tenderness and a quiet ache here. The speaker clearly values that older, event-filled way of remembering, even though it comes from a world marked by loss. The closing question leaves the reader wondering whether this personal calendar says more about a person than any official date could.
Calendar — Summary
My grandmother had a true calendar, a meaningful, eventful one.
“You were born four moons after the heavy flooding which killed half of the town, twelve moons before the communists dynamited the church. It was just two moons after the grapes were ripened,” she used to say to me.
As a child, until I began school, I knew nothing of the fact that I was born on 1st October, 1963.
If I tell you my birthday with the current calendar, I tell you nothing about myself.
But, what if I use my grandmother’s calendar?