(She looks at her photograph)
I would like to have known
My husband's wife, my mother's only daughter.
A bright girl she was.
Enmeshed in comforting
Fat, I wonder at her delicate angles.
Her autocratic knee
Like a Degas dancer's
Adjusts to the observer with an airy poise
That now lugs me upstairs
Hardly. Her face, broken
By nothing sharper than smiles, holds in its smiles
What I have forgotten.
She knows my father's dead
And grieves for it, and smiles. she has digested
Mourning. Her smile shows it.
I, who need reminding
Every morning, shall never get over what
i do not remember.
Consistency matters.
I should like to keep faith with her lack of faith,
But forget her reasons.
Proud of this younger self,
I a**ert her achievements, her A levels,
Her job with a future.
Poor clever girl! I know,
For all my damaged brain , something she doesn't:
I am her future.
A bright girl she was.