Today’s choice was tough, what with no important holidays any time soon from which to draw upon. OK, kidding. Actually, it was a bit tough because it seems that every poet who has ever put pen to paper has written a poem about his mother. Philip Larkin wrote a particularly honest poem about both his parents that starts out
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But somehow that didn’t seem quite appropriate for the sentiment most people would be looking for on Mother’s Day. So, instead, I’m relying on Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who wrote a series of sonnets to his mother upon her death in the mid-80s. What makes these poems so remarkable is how they capture and celebrate the almost completely forgettable moments that pass between a mother and child a thousand times over the course of a lifetime.
From Clearances 3
(Listen)
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
From Clearances 5
(Listen)
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
The cool that came off the sheets just off the line
Made me think the damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we’d stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she’d sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.



