Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PICTURE THIS:/ FOR THE 100TH BIRTHDAY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER, by ANDREW MOTION Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: My dream of your birthday Subject(s): Birthdays; Elizabeth, The Queen Mother (1900-2002); Bowes-lyons, Elizabeth | ||||||||
My dream of your birthday is more like a wedding - the August sky confused with confetti, no, not with confetti, with photograph-falls where the steady gaze of the century's eyes captures your ages unguarded or posed. 1905: CHILDHOOD Nobody heard the blackbird chink-chinking on the level lawn but it was always there, declaiming its birthright; and nobody saw how lichen blistering the drive had mixed green and gold in stubborn coats-of-arms, but they clung on. The frame of everything was Glamis with its battlements and towers, and you side-saddle on your boxy grey inside the moment as it froze and held: your life your own and all the world unknown. 1914-18: SERVICE The shutter opens and the world expands. It's Hawtrey at the Colly for your birthday but he can't be heard, or not heard as he wants - outside, along St Martin's Lane, a people-torrent runs and will not wait to get the enemy. The show goes on. And then goes on elsewhere, in wards where nursing changes strangers into brothers while your real brothers pack their bags and leave as strangers, or else go for good. 1923: MARRIAGE Jazz, New Look, new plunging necklaces and snap! you're cornered in a studio where beauty holds its own but loses edge and makes a soft advertisement for love. For love which finds its focus as a bride and keeps its nerve, and sees its way, then rides the shimmer of its own delight returning to the world the gift it gives in private - tongue-tied tongue set loose, the head confirming what the heart believes. 1937: CORONATION In public; chairs into thrones; people to subjects, and the shudder of transition rippling through the camera's eye - his sombre face an effigy as inescapably the crown is lowered; your face tender with the load it brings to bear, and what it means to hear beyond the shooshing satins and the stone Guernica crumbling, fire in Palestine, and Germany again - earth groaning as it shifts its weight and stalls in misery. 1940: BLITZ THE PALACE CUP: then comes the blast and choking lift that brings you where you look East Enders in the face - not land exactly now but roof-spars, earth-in-shreds, a gluey crater which was once indoors, and you as one of us - or like enough to make a crowd of wind-frayed kids and peering mums, and husbands jostling with the press-men in their burly coats, all think you are. And thank their lucky stars. 1952: WIDOWHOOD Basalt blackness at his funeral and basalt stillness: through your veil the fossil-face of grief, the stricken gaze which bounces back the flash-lights to their source but masks a working brain, and sees the years and years ahead the way an acrobat might see a tightrope and the audience below: the dizzy space, the camera-pops, the swaying line between thin air and ground and every single step bourne up by company. 1960: THE FAMILY The years wind on, the world and family develop into colour and due season: winter poppies, Spring in May, the grassy Ascot drive half summer-greeting, half-acknowledgement. And everything a system made of signs: the marches past, foundation stones, the plaques and special trees which prove your life in ours yet make it seem a secret too - the way a salmon swells in secret through the currents of a pool you stand beside, and glances at your fly, and keeps its course. 1997: LATE ON No changes, on the face of it: the balconies, the open smile and wave, the garden parties, and the hats, the hats, the hats, all pictures in our albums or our heads along with these: the photos no-one took of you - the grandmother-confessor-friend, the mourner at divorces and the rest, the worldly watcher of the world who shows the world no changes on the face of it: the balconies, the open wave and smile, the hats, the hats, the hats. My dream of your birthday is more like a wedding, the August sky confused with confetti, and lit with the flash of our camera-gaze - the century's eyes of homage and duty which understand best the persistence of love. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOR THE QUEEN MOTHER by JOHN BETJEMAN GOAL by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE SAGA OF THE SMALL-BREASTED WOMAN by KAREN SWENSON ASPECTS OF THE PINES by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE SNOWFLAKES by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ODES II, 10 by QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS |
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