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]
