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Frances Cornford
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till a man should claim the comfort of your body
And your industry and presence for his own.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till the child growing hidden in your body
Should become a living creature in the light.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till your child who had ventured to the city
Should return to the shelter of his home.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees
--Your unreturning son was in the city--
Till Death should come along the cobbled street.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees.
At her western window, she's stitching.
The needle pricks her sometimes. She moves
Her hand aside to not bleed on silk.
Even as she works, her waxed thread in
Rows appearing like commas, she sees a
Western meadowlark pounce in tall grass
Ever growing, unmowed, outside. When
She stops, peering over thick lenses
To note the meadowlark has a grub, to her
Ears come, faintly, short songs of its mate.
Reaching for her scissors, she snips a tail,
Nudges it out of sight behind a stitch.
When this row is done, she'll ask her mate
If it will do. If not, she'll turn her mother's
Needle and pull thread, loop by loop
Down to the place her mind wandered.
There is nothing new in what is said
By either a needle or a thread :
Stitch, says a needle, Stitch, says the thread:
Stitch for the living; stitch for the dead;
All seams measure the same.
Garb for the living is light and gay.
While that for the dead is a shrouding grey.
But all things match on a later day
When little worm-stitches in the clay
Finish all seams the same.
I am sewing out my sorrow,
Like a thread, wearing it thin;
It will be old and frayed to-morrow.
Needle, turn out; needle, turn in.
Sorrow's thread is a long thread.
Needle, one stitch; needle, two.
And sorrow's thread is a strong thread,
But I will wear it through.
Then not only will sorrow
Be old and thin and frayed;
But I shall have to-morrow
Something sorrow has made.
Many sewing days ago
I cross-stitched on a black satin bag
Two listening macaws.
They were perched on a stiff branch
With every stitch of their green tails,
Their blue wings, yellow breasts and sharply turned heads,
Alert and listening.
Now sometimes on the edge of relaxation
My thought is caught back.
Like gathers along a gathering thread.
To the listening macaws;
And I am amazed at the futile energy
That has kept them,
Alert to the last stitch.
Listening into their black satin night.
My needle's thread is long and slow;
As a needle goes a thread must go,
And lame and blind a needle is,
Weighed with a mood's profundities.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A thread must travel a needle's track.
And a needle leads an aimless course
Labouring against the force
Of gathering thought . . .
A needle's thread will not be taut
When every stitch is made to feel
Pressure upon the needle's steel
Of coldly flowing reality.
Fluent as waters that find the sea.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A needle is foiled and driven back
Last night when my work was done,
And my estranged hands
Were becoming mutually interested
In such forgotten things as pulses,
I looked out of a window
Into a glittering night sky.
And instantly
I began to feather-stitch a ring around the moon.
When the dawn unfolds like a bolt of ribbon
Thrown through my window,
I know that hours of light
Are about to thrust themselves into me
Like omnivorous needles into listless cloth,
Threaded with the heavy colours of the sun.
They seem altogether too eager
To embroider this thing of mine,
My Day,
Into the strict patterns of an altar cloth;
Or at least to stitch it into a useful garment.
But I know they will do nothing of the kind.
They will prick away.
And when they are through with it
It will look like the patch quilt my grandmother made
When she was learning to sew.
My stitches, like the even tide of feet
Beating against the pavement of the street
Below my window-sill, forever run
Before the footsteps of the sun.
Down streets of seams, and formal avenues
Of basted hems, each crowding stitch pursues.
Seeking no destination on the way —
Only the end of day.
I was sewing a seam one day —
Just this way —
Flashing four silver stitches there
With thread, like this, fine as a hair.
And then four here, and there again,
When
The seam I sewed dropped out of sight
I saw the sea come rustling in,
Big and grey, windy and bright . . .
Then my thread that was as thin
As hair, tangled up like smoke
And broke.
I threaded up my needle, then —
Four here, four there, and here again.
Crowds are passing on the street,
Tuck on tuck and pleat on pleat
Of people hurrying along,
Homeward bound, throng on throng.
Their work is finished, mine undone;
Still my stitches run.
I cannot watch the people go,
Fold on fold and row on row;
But I know each pulsing tread
Is spinning out a life's fine thread;
I know the stars, like needle-gleams,
Are pricking through the sky's wide seams ;
And soon the moon must show its face,
Like a pearl button stitched in place.
All the long hours of the day
Are finished now and folded away;
When Grandmother comes to our house,
She sits in the chair and sews away.
She cuts some pieces just alike
And makes a quilt all day.
I watch her bite the little thread,
Or stick the needle in and out,
And then she remembers her grandmother's house,
And what her grandmother told about,
And how a very long ago--
She tells it while she cuts and strips--
We used to live in Mary-land,
And there was a water with ships.
But that was long before her day,
She says, and so I like to stand
Beside her chair, and then I ask,
"Please tell about in Mary-land."