It’s been a slow news day here at the GFG luxury penthouse suite in Thanatology Towers. So here’s a very good poem by Owen Sheers. If you like it, buy the collection. It’s called Skirrid Hill and it’s published by seren.
On Going
i. m. Jean Sheers
There were instruments, as there always are,
To measure, record and monitor,
windows into the soul’s temperature.
But you were disconnected from these.
and lay instead an ancient http://www.health-canada-pharmacy.com child,
fragile on your side,
your breath working at the skin of your cheek
like a blustery wind at a blind.
There was only one measurement
I needed anyway, which you gave,
triggered by the connection of my kiss
against your paper temple
and registered in the flicker of your open eyes,
in their half-second of recorded understanding
before they disengaged and you slipped back
into the sleep of their slow-closing.
made me cry
dont really understand the poem…
Can someone give me a brief explination please?
Hello, Amber. The poem is i. m. – in memoriam. It is in memory of Jean Sheers – the poet’s mother, perhaps. She has been disconnected from her monitoring machines and is lying in a foetal position, dying. Even though she is very close to death, she nevertheless recognises the poet, albeit it only momentarily. This is important to him. It is a sad poem, of course, and very stark, yet full of love and sadness and honesty.
I hope this helps.
Jean Sheers is not Owen’s Mother. She was very much alive when I saw her recently at the premier of Resistance.
Oh, Sallie, I have put my foot in it. Thank you for this good news. May she enjoy many more years. Thank you very much for correcting a sloppy error. I must now find out who the subject of the poem is.
thankyou charles, this was very helpful 🙂
A pleasure, Amber.
thanks for this Charles, I have been asked to read this at a ceremony, tricky reading!!
Jean Sheers was Owen’s grandmother.
The subject of the poem is an elderly person who is dying. the dissconnection from the machines is in my opinion not a literal disconnection. Perhaps the Poet is saying, these ‘instruments’ are not you, they do not define you and i won’t remember them as being part of you. the only ‘measurement’ he is interested in is the flicker of an eye, a human reaction. as short as it was, it was enough. they lay ‘as an ancient child’, shows the fragility of life along with the circle of life. we are at our most fragile as an infant… Read more »
good poem 10/10 x