aemy
21st Apr 2007, 5:43
This draft/poem is tricky because it relies entirely on the reader's knowing the issues, images and themes from another source (here, "Desert Queen" by Janet Wallach.) Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), was sometimes known (a bit melodramatically for my taste,) as the "mother" of modern Iraq. (The title is fair - I simply tend to steer away from sentiment which might seem too easy or too Victorian - ) Her own mother was industrialist Hugh Bell's first wife, Mary Shields, who died after bearing a son when Gertrude was only two. Eight years later, Hugh married Florence Olliffe - a cultivated woman, a playwright, with a circle of literary friends - but G.'s letters and the biography itself leave some doubts as to how nurturing or "motherly" Florence was in G.'s life. Gertrude's courage, instincts and skills were essential to British WW I victories in what was still Mesopotamia; but increasingly after the war, the Administration ceased to support her. She died at 58, exhausted, ill, finally "recognized" - but essentially alone.
The poem avoids conventional stanzas and rhyme; my main concern was to try to keep it taut - and still manage to maintain clarity. Have no idea if it works ...
Very draft-y, very rough - haven't done this for years. Into the deep end of the pool!
"Mothers"
What do we know of you, Florence?
Reader, writing plays - were they well received?
Entertaining literate friends and
Dressing well.
You saw a sad and handsome man one afternoon;
Did you reckon on his red-haired, passionate daughter?
His companion, their rose gardens flourishing together.
Some men see their first and gentle wife
In a garden's greening, overgrowing life;
Wild flowers, tamed and comforted, companionable in rows,
Chrysanthemums, bright auburn; dahlias, stunning in the sun,
Red blooms.
I think that gentle Mary Shields envisioned
Her dear and only daughter,
Saw her many-shaded blossomings,
Brilliant as Persia, even now;
She would have known
How high the sturdy stem would grow, how proud.
Would see her graft in turn
Raw scions and rough stock,
Tending a new, uneasy, eastern bed;
Still Mary knew the cleanest cleft,
The surest join,
She knew the best advice.
"Cut all scions to a uniform length, keep
Their basal ends together, and tie
Them in bundles of known quantity;
Label them, record the cultivar,
Date of harvest, and location
Of the stock plant ... "
In the most intricate, most frangible of gardens,
Another birth, but painful;
Dangerous, difficult, ...
I think that Mary watched, and knew,
Rejoiced,
And grieved, again.
__________________
The poem avoids conventional stanzas and rhyme; my main concern was to try to keep it taut - and still manage to maintain clarity. Have no idea if it works ...
Very draft-y, very rough - haven't done this for years. Into the deep end of the pool!
"Mothers"
What do we know of you, Florence?
Reader, writing plays - were they well received?
Entertaining literate friends and
Dressing well.
You saw a sad and handsome man one afternoon;
Did you reckon on his red-haired, passionate daughter?
His companion, their rose gardens flourishing together.
Some men see their first and gentle wife
In a garden's greening, overgrowing life;
Wild flowers, tamed and comforted, companionable in rows,
Chrysanthemums, bright auburn; dahlias, stunning in the sun,
Red blooms.
I think that gentle Mary Shields envisioned
Her dear and only daughter,
Saw her many-shaded blossomings,
Brilliant as Persia, even now;
She would have known
How high the sturdy stem would grow, how proud.
Would see her graft in turn
Raw scions and rough stock,
Tending a new, uneasy, eastern bed;
Still Mary knew the cleanest cleft,
The surest join,
She knew the best advice.
"Cut all scions to a uniform length, keep
Their basal ends together, and tie
Them in bundles of known quantity;
Label them, record the cultivar,
Date of harvest, and location
Of the stock plant ... "
In the most intricate, most frangible of gardens,
Another birth, but painful;
Dangerous, difficult, ...
I think that Mary watched, and knew,
Rejoiced,
And grieved, again.
__________________