After Amour
It was the way he said
cherie
spooning the yoghurt
into her stubborn mouth
or the silent piano
or just the time it took
to do anything
–
walk down the hallway ̶
and then the phone
which he wouldn’t answer
no wonder my daughter said
don’t
expect me to look after you
like
that – and I wouldn’t
couldn’t and we all agreed
that the film was too slow
too mournful, too tiring and we blamed
my mother (spry for eighty-three)
for choosing it and I didn’t say
anything but when she said
our family goes quickly
I knocked on a wooden sign
hard, as though a bruise
could save us all.
Sometimes I just want a poem to be like a small diary entry, a jotting at the end of the day - or a photo, snapped without much palaver. This is a small poem I wrote after seeing Amour - a film I think now, after seeing it is over - is overly long and gruelling and haunting. It's hard work - which is, of course, the point of the film, I guess. I would have been equally haunted, I'm pretty sure, had it been twenty minutes shorter. The acting by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva is superb.
Be poetically haunted by other poems on the Tuesday Poem hub - a less onerous experience! Wang Ping's sonnets from the sequence, 'The River in Our Blood' are the opposite of a small diary entry. They are stunning - and inspirational. Thanks to Eileen Moeller for guest editing this week's hub.
In Readings Bookshop after seeing Amour. I'm pretty sure the mothership is looking at the travel section.
4 comments:
Very nice, reads smooth, and paints its situation well. I like poems that end something like this.
Mmm, such a quiet personal thing. I like the way this captures a moment, and a whole family, too. Lovely.
It must have been an extraordinary film to imprinted on you like that. a lovely poem too...I thought you were writing about your own family.
Thank you people! It was a difficult film,Helen - but extraordinarily memorable. Rethabile, we might meet in Paris? I arrive mid-June - so exciting!
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