All the Things..

20 June 2006 @ 10:37 p.m.

All The Things You Are Not Yet - Helen Dunmore

for tess

Tonight there's a crowd in my head:
all the things you are not yet.
You are words without paper, pages
sighing in summer forests, gardens
where builders stub out their rubble
and plastic oozes its sweat.
All the things you are, you are not yet.

Not yet the lonely window in midwinter
with the whine of tea on an empty stomach,
not yet the heating you can't afford and must wait for,
tamping a coin in on each hour.
Not the gorgeous shush of restaurant doors
and their interiors, always so much smaller.
Not the smell of the newsprint, the blur
on your fingertips �X your fame. Not yet

the love you will have for Winter Pearmains
and Chanel No 5 �X and then your being unable
to buy both washing-machine and computer
when your baby's due to be born,
and my voice saying, "I'll get you one"
and you frowning, frowning
at walls and surfaces which are not mine �X
all this, not yet. Give me your hand,

that small one without a mark of work on it,
the one that's strange to the washing-up bowl
and doesn't know Fairy Liquid for whiskey.
Not yet the moment of your arrival in taxis
at daring destinations, or your being alone at stations
with the skirts of your fashionable clothes flapping
and no money for the telephone.

Not yet the moment when I can give you nothing
so well-folded it fits in an envelope �X
a dull letter you won't reread.
Not yet the moment of your assimilation
in that river flowing westward: rivers of clothes,
of dreams, an accent unlike my own
saying to someone I don't know: darling...

This is one of the most beautiful poems in my poetry anthology, although I was working on the pre 1770 section instead of the contemporary section.

Originally it was the mother's thoughts, thinking for her young daughter's future. It mmanages to pull me from my luminiscence ivory tower (ah, all the caricature on academia comes into place, when we are trapped by syllabuses' requirements)

It's another reminder..we still have a long way to go in our lives, and still polished Swiss army knives* waiting to stab out of the pocket.

*After the 7 year epoch, it seems we, are like polished knives, don't we?