Update 8/2007: The Point of the Poem

I am exhausted. I've had a full day at work, and I'm on my way home from two hours spent with Flo. We have covered the first years in Wimbledon – London in the 1950’s.

I walk tiredly through Notting Hill, feeling a little surreal. Spending time with Flo always reminds me that I am a foreigner in London. Each time I leave her I view the city through a stranger’s eyes again. Also I am aware all the time – in some deeper, less conscious part of me – that it is my mother’s birthday today, and she is thinking of me, and we have hardly spoken in a while.

I head down into the tube station; down to the barriers, down the escalator to the Circle and District line level, down another escalator to the Central Line; (there’s a girl playing classical music on a small fold-up organ which sounds like a grand piano). Down one more escalator to the Central Line Eastbound.

I’m on the train now, and my mind is wandering. My eye roams the carriage and catches onto some words; “Love Poems on the Underground”. How I love these posters. You don’t see them very often, but when you do, each one is worth a moment’s reading. It reminds me yet again of why I love London; a city that offers you a moment of sanctuary in art in a world of stark staring madness. (Also, I am in the second week of university work, reading through the poetry section. We are studying sonnets.)

Idly I read the poem. I pause, I go back. I read it again. I am struck by the metaphor, and by the ambiguity at the end. What does he mean? Does he mean their love is ending? Or just beginning? I read it again. I ask myself – almost frustrated; why is this poem here? What's the point of the poem?

And suddenly I have one of those moments; it’s like being struck by lightning. This poem is here for me to read. There is no other purpose to its existence; only this: it requires me to read it. That’s all. It sounds so obvious, so inane, but it feels like a revelation.

I pause the moment. I look around. I'm in a dark, half-empty tube carriage. The lighting is soft and warm, and the couches – more comfortable than on the Northern Line – are dark red and blue. Across from me sits a Chinese man, engrossed in his paper. The room feels like a museum or a library; silent, comfortable.

This is the moment this poem was meant for.

In our tenth year
(Simon Armitage)

This book, this page, this harebell laid to rest
Between these sheets, these leaves, if pressed
still bleeds
a watercolour of the way we were.

Those years: the fuss of such and such a day,
that disagreement and its final word,
your inventory of names and dates and times,
my infantries of tall, dark, handsome lies.

A decade on, now we astound ourselves;
still two, still twinned but doubled now with love
and for a single night apart, alone,
how sure we are, each of the other half.

This harebell holds its own. Let's give it now
in air, with light, the chance to fade, to fold.
Here, take it from my hand. Now, let it go.