Sometimes there is news that we all know will come, but how sad when it does.
....the death of author and poet Helen Dunmore yesterday.
Helen Dunmore wrote so openly and honestly about her diagnosis and prognosis when her recent novel Birdcage Walk was published, and since then I have been reading her last collection of poems Inside the Wave and keeping her in my thoughts.
'To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone. These poems are concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead - the underworld and the human living world - and the exquisitely intense being of both. They possess a spare, eloquent lyricism as they explore the bliss and anguish of the voyage.'
This is a beautiful collection of moving and memorable poems; poems that offer avenues for so much thought and one of which, for reasons I can't really explain, I have read over and over and always it leaves me with the same warm feeling... and I think we could all do with some warm feelings this week.
Little papoose
If I were the moon
With a star papoose
In the windy sky
I'd carry my one star home.
If I were the sea
With boats in my arms
On this cold morning
I'd carry them,
If I were sleeping
And my dream turned
I would carry you
Little papoose
Wherever you choose.
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Requiescat in pace Helen Dunmore.
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