IRISH-IN-UK-L Archives

From: "Jean R." <>
Subject: [Irish-in-UK] "Grandmother's Wedding Photograph" - Ms. Pat JOURDAN,b. Liverpool>Galway
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:53:25 -0700

Grandmother's Wedding Photograph
Pat Jourdan


Here is the picture I cannot paint.
Take one green field
and draw to it a score of people -
half to be dressed in white,
half in black.
Drench in sepia for a hundred years.
Countryside men, stiff in suits,
the women bound tight at the waist,
bodies hiding behind cloth.
The bride to be shrouded
in mists of coverings.
She regards you, her lips brim,
ripe without lipstick.
Stand next to her the shyest of the men,
trying to hide his coarsened builder's hands.
Give him the clearest if all their eyes.
Although they look direct at you,
their bodies call to each other through the cloth
At their feet, arrange a row of children,
open as roses.
Those stocky bones,
that peasant stubbornness.
A peace. A certainty. (Surround all this with sky.)
Somewhere I am in that picture
already present in that blood.
History's sliced between us
like a carving knife
yet something close survives
- with these first grey hairs
I become that woman in the photograph.

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• [Irish-in-UK] "Grandmother's Wedding Photograph" - Ms. Pat JOURDAN,b. Liverpool>Galway by "Jean R." <>