Christmas brings forth memories of yesteryear: times of children, laughter, squeals, and pets adding their own kind of play acting. This poem is an ode to that nostalgia.
Handle With Care
The table beckons with its holiday feast,
Christmas stockings decking a black iron railing;
an evergreen overflowing with gifts and toys
...in a room once filled with laughter and noise.
Shadows of yesterday haunt me with its plaintive call,
fate reigns triumphant in life's fickle flight,
and time wings without warning, unraveling, incessant
...as day into night.
It's Christmas again, the beginning anew,
our table is set...tho' only for two;
the room less festive yet lain out as before,
and a tree dazzling and splendid--but gifts are few.
Two Christmas stockings now hang with a gallant bravado,
while our children build memories with families of their own, "Savor each memory--mark Handle with care,"
...for the time when, they too...will be only a pair.
First Edition Translation of Teselas by Carmen Crespo X111 César Simón Poetry Prixe 2016 Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospíde
Robin Ouzman Hislop's poetry is certainly in dialogue with some of the key architects of the 'poetics of indeterminacy' – both the Modernist strands represented by the likes of Beckett and Stein, and the postmodernist strands represented, initially,
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Words so true, yet bittersweet in remembrence of all that came before. Merry Christmas to you too...
Be always safe,
Karen
GOD BLESS
Tony