Hiraeth – Three poems for my mother 1923 – 2012
Hiraeth /hɪəraɪ̯θ/ is a Welsh word that has no direct English
translation. However, the University of Wales, Lampeter,
attempts to define it as homesickness tinged with grief or
sadness over the lost or departed.
Mine, hers?
My mother is her hands.
She sits like Buddha and
plays with a few fingers,
looking at them. First
there were cobwebs
between her old fingers.
Now they are gone;
slowly she wakes up
inside me and starts to
open the cupboards and
becomes young again
as she lives between the
hairs of my eyelashes,
bending, what do I see,
or what does she see
through my eyes, hers?
Star
Yes well we are distant now,
the past like a darkening wall
between us, an illness. I
touch the bricks with my fingers,
break my nails as I try to
scratch the cement, grey, bitter,
can’t focus any longer.
Her images are coming
out of my chest, projected
on the wall like good old slides,
the images seem to be soft,
soft toys, a cushion with
her photo on it. A star.
Thank You
Yes she died, dead,
really,
when I put her ashes,
her dust, true kiss,
into the ground,
hole.
No matter,
because a mouse
dies and who
are we, writers,
painters, police man,
baker, pizza maker?
They put ashes into our hands.
Thank you.