Sunday, January 21, 2007
I am feeling deliciously random at the moment and thus decided to talk about nonsensical stuff.
I actually wanted to talk about the animes I’ve watched so far, but then I decided against it as I’m too lazy. Ah hahaha.
But then there’s this poem that we’re studying for Literature now, at least we studied for literature, that I really like. So I thought I’d post it here. It’s called ‘My Grandmother’ by Elizabeth Jennings.
My Grandmother
She kept an antique shop - or it kept her.
Among Apostle spoons and Bristol glass,
The faded silks, the heavy furniture,
She watched her own reflection in the brass
Salvers and silver bowls, as if to prove
Polish was all, there was no need of love.
And I remember how I once refused
To go out with her, since I was afraid.
It was perhaps a wish not to be used
Like antique objects. Though she never said
That she was hurt, I still could feel the guilt
Of that refusal, guessing how she felt.
Later, too frail to keep a shop, she put
All her best things in one narrow room.
The place smelt old, of things too long kept shut,
The smell of absences where shadows come
That can't be polished. There was nothing then
To give her own reflection back again.
And when she died I felt no grief at all,
Only the guilt of what I once refused.
I walked into her room among the tall
Sideboards and cupboards - things she never used
But needed; and no finger marks were there,
Only the new dust falling through the air.
It reminds me of my own grandmother though mine never kept an antique shop. Especially the last stanza. I really felt no grief at all; I don’t remember really crying during her funeral. It was only like at CAP last year, that when I wrote about her funeral that I really cried about it. But the last two lines were delicious: ‘no finger marks were there, /Only the new dust falling through the air.’
Geez I’m weird. It’s that angsty, typical buried pain kind of thing. Bottled pain or something. Can’t remember.
Posted by norbert at 1/21/2007 01:26:00 AM