For peace on earth, for pity's sake, for peace, for peace

Jackie Kay

In My Country

walking by the waters,

down where an honest river

shakes hands with the sea,

a woman passed round me

in a slow, watchful circle,

as if I were a superstition;

or the worst dregs of her imagination,

so when she finally spoke

her words spliced into bars

of an old wheel. A segment of air.

Where do you come from?

'Here,' I said, 'Here. These parts.'

George Square

My seventy-seven-year-old father

put his reading glasses on

to help my mother do the buttons

on the back of her dress.

'What a pair the two of us are!'

my mother said, 'Me with my sore wrist,

you with your bad eyes, your soft thumbs!'

And off they went, my two parents

to march against the war in Iraq,

him with his plastic hips. Her with her arthritis,

to congregate at George Square, where the banners

waved at each other like old friends, flapping,

where they'd met for so many marches over their years,

for peace on earth, for pity's sake, for peace, for peace

[pierwszy wiersz pochodzi z tomu Other Lovers (Bloodaxe Books, 1993), drugi z książki Life Mask (Bloodaxe books, 2005), a ja skopiowałem je ze stron www.poetryarchive.org i www.poemhunter.com (skądinąd mało zachęcająca nazwa portalu z poezją...), na pierwszym z portali można też posłuchać jak poetka czyta wiersz In My Country]