Am meisten gelesen ▸
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.
last night in sleep I lost my papers
my morning
my change
my dinner
my cover
my head
and my sons that are nothing
like me
my son’s old kite
I put on my velvet coat
to go to town
No thinking or cake,
trouble or work
in my absence.
No father or son.
A dead body, I hear,
is not much.
My books fit my mind,
a music beyond imagination.
But a thief stole a letter—
the last W—
to send to his son.
Birth is mundane, a mere formality
A realization of dreams, or of lust.
In the nurse’s arms, swaddled in clothes,
The baby screams, or whimpers with eyes shut.
This is it; you have bought it, my lad.
Formalities over, the manager stands up
The key in his cupped palms.
Theatrical, he pauses as if in a short prayer
And drops it into your open palm.
In her flowered dress, hair braided
Arm resting around the baby on her left
Proof of my manhood, her motherhood
She looks at him, at me, in gratitude and love.
I stand a little apart, look uncomprehending
At the beast, silent; glittering chrome
Massive tyres, sweeping handlebars
While in a train from north to south,
Past the paddy, the groves, the lagoons,
Past where pearls glitter in sun,
Someone I love passed me by.
In a train from south to north,
Past the streams, the ponds, the lakes
On the tracks west to where I sat,
In that train fleeing past,
My son, my uttermost love, passed me by.
In that train that flew past me,
In the blur of faces that swept past me,
One was my son, my uttermost love.
I, in a train running north to south,
My heart in a train running south to north.
He is my spitting image, they say,
A miniature, a chip off the old block.
From near, from afar, he resembles me so,
My son, my blood, torchbearer of my life.
I don’t how I were as a baby,
But I could see it when he was one.
I was glad, proud, deliriously happy,
The proof my manhood, my only son.
I were, I am, still man enough,
For another progeny, his sister or brother.
A friend for my son to play with,
A heart for him to confide in.
‘All my friends have a sister or brother,
Why too can’t I have one?’
He no more asks me this question,
But its shadow still flits in his eyes.
weed that hides rock
white deceiving chalk
could crumble under dead pine
i would risk those cliffs down to sea
white first
my eyes have greeted you
my tongue and lips felt your chalk white
no kiss that touch
i have come from algier
my son
the heat is here still
with us
where boats stop
my son dead in white cunt sand
could scream white dust
i can smell your scream marseille
I visit
the graves
Great grandfather
under wild flowers sons
sons here now I
eye
of us all
but sonless
see no
hop
clover boy to stop
before me
When the day took me for a walk
towards the twilight,
I saw my son sowing a kiss on a young lady’s lips.
I felt old.
As if by magic, a grandfather grew within me.
After two minutes’ walk, my mother phoned,
‘How are you my son’, she asked;
and I felt young again, like a child.
Swift across the night a little cry,
Against the cold white night a stain of red,
The moon dips down,
The dull winds blow.
My unborn son is dead.