Sunday 24 January 2016

Poem by the Belgian writer Hilde Keteleer

PATRIMONY

From my leisurely Sunday morning
I see how a blackbird stubbornly tugs
until the worm admits it’s dispatched.

A hundred times the blackbird must
have hopped past my father’s eyes
as he pushed the spade into the soil,

his shoulders hunched,
his half-smiling lips tighter
than in former years.

Now that I know him,
am an eldest daughter,

he silently produces a word
that has to do with pruning,
not putting dahlias in vases

but letting them last in the ground
for a whole season,
retaining their shape in tubers.

Procreated by chance,
I think, and watch the blackbird’s
cautious, patient stance.

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