I’ve recently given up my outside office, an old washhouse at the end of my garden. With less community and schools work as a matter of choice, I don’t need the space for planning and storing workshop materials. After thirty-five years working there, I see myself happily writing at the kitchen table towards my next collection [joke title ‘Eighty Sonnets for an Octogenarian].
My partner David is going to take over the little office as an art studio and has been tidying out the detritus of so many years. As someone who has become less bothered by the need to have relics of my past, less attached to objects and even books, I felt I could have offloaded it all into a skip. But David is much more responsible than I and feels quite rightly he has to check with me if he comes across old documents, photographs or stuff that I might still care about; the truth is that this impromptu excavation of my personal history is kind of uncomfortable, hence the poem below. Old age comes with many losses and this process seem to emphasise them even more.
This Archaeology
This archaeology, disinterment
Of half-forgotten relics of my life
Stirs memories, and the main sentiment
Is regretful, close to a kind of grief.
You’re clearing the old office where I sat
Suspended and lost in a daydream trance
Of creation (though sometimes not quite that )
For years, now it’s a half-remembered dance,
Your questions, ‘Should I keep?’, ‘Do you want?’
Bring visions I had not still thought to have.
The history I need is winnowed, scant;
To these prompted thoughts I’d rather be deaf.
It seems the swirl of recent loss, new joy,
Can steady the heartbeat of this old boy.
The one object that didn’t prompt this reaction is the clay head of a small, black child. Bought in a charity shop in Surbiton while on my way to visit my late friend Patricia, it went with me into many schools and writing groups over the years. Until the day I opened my school bag and I found it broken into two pieces; David came across the head, mended it and it now sits on a sunny patch on the shelf above the fire in our Headingley sitting room.
