Wednesday, September 07, 2005
this is to be
I can't sleep so I've decided to post one of my very favourite poems:
this is to be
by Peggy Dragisic
ahhh...
this is to be pregnant with sun
every limb fruit-full
satisfied heavy
this is to be golden,
not Midas metal but
apricot
taut and tender stuffed
with light
I have harvest babies
apricot burnished babies
russet apple gleaming chestnut
babies
winter-sown
summer-grown
harvest babies
optimistic babies
in disregard of brunette genes
to come out so copper
coloured
as if to say
Mom mind's gloom's
quite absent in body's womb
there, Mom, it's
all sun
four eyes across the picnic
table
all blue
two round bad and merry
two long in tangled shadows
two noses, mouths, four ears,
legs, arms, twenty
fingers! twenty
toes!
beyond all arithmetic
love-stuffed cells
of aweful life
uncountable
I had to do a presentation on this in my poetry course last year. So of course, I have read this poem hundreds upon hundreds of times, liking it more after each reading.
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9 comments:
Salam Asmaa,
Should you not be in bed!? :)
that poem has made me hungry
This poem sounds like an expecting mother having a very pleasant dream... *sigh*... how cute!
hey asm,
it's better centered ;)
p.s: isn't it "Mom's mind gloom's" (rather than "Mom mind's gloom's" ?) That's what I remember anyway. Take care
You didn't tell me that Ibrahim goes to Ryerson. I saw him yesterday, and he's giant-like. I swear, I was looking into the sky to talk to him. And puberty certainly did a number on his voice. Seriously.
I'm not trying to be mean about the giant thing. He's just really tall. In a good way.
Hey Sheikh, yeah it does look much better centred, but I can't figure out how to centre it. Yeah, I know I'm lame. And I checked and it actually is "Mom mind's gloom's" :)
Sara, yeah my brother is going to Ryerson for some reason. But, in these past 2 days I think he's spent more time playing basketball at the RAC than in class. He was saying how the seats in one of his classes are too small for him (his knees are jammed against the seat in front of him). So he resorted to lying down on the floor. Haha.
Man, I wonder what you guys talked about.
We didn't really talk about much. Just salams and how surprised I was to see him.
Hello: This is the very first time I've "blogged". I'm Peggy Roffey, was Peggy Dragisic in 1975 when I wrote The Medley; now one of those harvest babies (the one with the blue eyes "round bad and merry" has a baby and knows what it means now to be pregnant with sun. Whoever ARE you? What a lovely thought, that someone in 2005, THIRTY years later, was still reading that little chapbook. Thanks! Peggy
My favourite childhood poem since childhood:
As I walked to school today
a squirrel hurried by
Fetching nuts to fill his store
too busy to be shy
High above, I heard the sound
the wild duck's echoed call
In the sky, a v-shaped sign
announcing time for fall.
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