Medlin the Writer: To A Niece

Monday, 6 May 2019

To A Niece

An object lesson. When writing this I was aware of the risk that it might end up too close to W.B. Yeats for comfort, but despite my best efforts that is what happened. As poets sometimes report, the writing took control and the poet followed behind. The final stanza is very Yeatsian although it says what I wanted to say. To try and introduce my own voice a little more, at revision time I wrote an alternative final two lines, given below, although to my mind they do not say as much as my original ending. Readers can choose at will!

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   And from the blue a Christmas card
   From one unheard of these few years:
A niece long settled with her own backyard,
A spouse and child and all that makes for joy;
   I sent a gift that those young ears
Might perk at talk of unexpected treats,
That busy hands might play with rapt employ
   Or busy teeth devour some sweets!

What thin-hairs uncle does not pause

   To offer pert advice to those
Who daily cope? And yet there’s truth in saws:
Hence, scorn those couples who in swoon parade
   A single chick whose doge-like nose
Crumples in squall should it due homage lack;
   Such a one will spoil nor be afraid
Years hence to shun its parents with its back.

Households should be agog with young

Jostling at the parental knee
That blood might bind and nuance of the tongue
Teach fortitude and love which none can shake;
And Albion too: that it be free,
Surplus of the young like gulls in the nest
Must be, that spreading white-plumed wings they rake
The cliffs and sea, in ardour dressed.

Already, passage birds in hordes

   Have settled coasts, the plains and urbs,
Their parti-coloured garbs and chattered gauds
Creating cantons where native writ is shunned.
   Their umma of aggressive verbs,
Their brute simplicity and gross élan,
   Will cow the shires; outbred and dunned
All will tug forelock to the musselman.

So, laud those ancient ways and means

   Which island-wide cohered a state:
Cathedral bells which catechized rough thegns,
Parley of men and monarch, binding shires,
   Later, the factories in spate,
That liberty and common law hold sway;
Career-entwined or sib at household fires
   Be blessed, for what you wish you may.

Disdain, though, gender politics

   Which, glib, would cauterize your womb;
For Sapphism is sterile, like dust in attics,
Whilst between the sexes there’s a rich cohesion –
   She with her grit and mother’s bloom,
He the provider, beating bounds at night,
   Children the fruit: balk with unreason
And all’s a garden blanched with lust and spite.

Like well-fed seedlings, soon your child

   A bright-haired, fresh-face girl must grow.
Harsh winds will knock her; sheikhs by hajj beguiled
Will thrust hijabs that a pious fate be hers.
   Give thanks that Albion’s blood shall flow
Through her; time-ripened, fitly-wed, may she
Bear sons who soil and history rehearse
   And saints, warriors or statesmen be.

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