Pray, love, remember...
It's National Poetry Day today, and I gather this year's theme is "remember". A couple of things came to mind.
Today is my eldest niece's thirtieth birthday, and tomorrow it will be thirty years since she died, so I am in the middle of my annual vigil. I was going to quote one of Wordsworth's Lucy poems, "She dwelt among the untrodden ways/Beside the springs of Dove", which I read at her funeral, but find that I did so eight years ago. So here's the last poem from that sequence instead.
Lucy, by William Wordsworth
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
The other work that the word "remember" prompted was Black Daisies for the Bride, Tony Harrison's drama-documentary about Alzheimer's patients in High Royds Hospital in Yorkshire. It focuses on three women, whom we see on Whernside ward in the present day (or rather 1993, when the film was made), and in the past as brides on their wedding day, played by actors, who sing Harrison's verses about their lives to the tunes of popular songs.
Unfortunately I don't have a printed text, so I've had to transcribe the passages I wanted from Youtube (where a former nurse from the ward has uploaded it). There were some words I couldn't quite work out, so this is an imperfect version, and of course I've had to make up the punctuation. But maybe, given the subject matter, imperfection is appropriate.
From Black Daisies for the Bride, by Tony Harrison
Kathleen Dickenson
[The narrator sings, to the tune of In the Bleak Midwinter]
Kathleen played piano, played accordion too;
Sometimes her hands remember what they used to do.
But mostly Kathleen cleans and cleans, cleans and cleans,
As though the home she lives in's still Kathleen's.
And it's bustling Kathleen's most repeated chore
To wipe and clean and polish Whernside ward's locked door.
Her caressing fingers coaxed, coaxed accordion's chords,
But can't press the door code that opens Whernside ward.
[Young Kath sings, to the tune of Oh, You Beautiful Doll]
Yeah, a motorbike bride, I'm Kath the motorbike bride!
Harold and me, we used to court on
A BSA and then a Norton.
Harold, him steering and me, me in the car at the side;
Motorbikes and mountains, me and Harold when
Up Mickle Fell and up Pen-y-Ghent -
c- c- c- c-
Can't you still tell from my stride?
And together we biked till every good mountain was seen,
Wrapped up well in warm windjammers,
Gazed at peaktop panoramas -
Those long vistas of green, those great long vistas of green -
Climbed up Whernside, Yorkshire's toughest peak,
So out of puff, we couldn't speak -
[puff] [puff] [puff] [puff]
Till Harold said "I love you Kathleen!
"I love you Kathleen,
"I love you Kathleen."
Nothing, nothing of thoughts, nothing, none of it stays:
Motorbike and mountaineering,
Lost in mist I won't be clearing,
Lost in the blizzard of days, the burying blizzard of days -
From the Whernside tramped up in our mountain gear
To this Whernside wandered with no Harold here
and - and - and -
Those long green vistas all grey.
If I hadn't lost the power to reminisce,
These are the moments that my heart would miss:
m- m- m- mo-
Moments on mountains wi' him.
Him? You'll want to know who
You'll really want to know who!
Who she's been, and cast your eyes on
Cloths she crocheted butterflies on,
Fish Kath caught with her rod,
These fruits that Kathleen once grew.
Kathleen was before Alzheimer's cruelly struck
An angler, climber, dancer, gardener, cook.
Now - now - now - now -
Kath knows nothing she knew.
All I remember is four,
Or at the very most five,
Words that still have got some meaning,
Spending days on Whernside, cleaning.
Not much memory left;
Soon even less'll survive,
With Alzheimer's shredding all remembered times,
The blizzard's blowing but goddammit I'm
g- gl- gla- glad
I'm still Kath and alive!
I'm still Kath and alive,
I'm still Kath and alive...
You can see this section of Black Daisies here, about 21 minutes in. But if you've only got a minute and a half, go for the second half, about 13 minutes in, when an entertainer visits the ward, singing the song whose music was used for Kath - "Oh, You Beautiful Doll". For a moment, Kath ignores him, but suddenly she turns round and begins to dance. Which proves Harrison's point: Kathleen Dickenson is still alive in there, and sometimes you can see her, in the way that sometimes you could catch glimpses of my father as he really was.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
Today is my eldest niece's thirtieth birthday, and tomorrow it will be thirty years since she died, so I am in the middle of my annual vigil. I was going to quote one of Wordsworth's Lucy poems, "She dwelt among the untrodden ways/Beside the springs of Dove", which I read at her funeral, but find that I did so eight years ago. So here's the last poem from that sequence instead.
Lucy, by William Wordsworth
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
The other work that the word "remember" prompted was Black Daisies for the Bride, Tony Harrison's drama-documentary about Alzheimer's patients in High Royds Hospital in Yorkshire. It focuses on three women, whom we see on Whernside ward in the present day (or rather 1993, when the film was made), and in the past as brides on their wedding day, played by actors, who sing Harrison's verses about their lives to the tunes of popular songs.
Unfortunately I don't have a printed text, so I've had to transcribe the passages I wanted from Youtube (where a former nurse from the ward has uploaded it). There were some words I couldn't quite work out, so this is an imperfect version, and of course I've had to make up the punctuation. But maybe, given the subject matter, imperfection is appropriate.
From Black Daisies for the Bride, by Tony Harrison
Kathleen Dickenson
[The narrator sings, to the tune of In the Bleak Midwinter]
Kathleen played piano, played accordion too;
Sometimes her hands remember what they used to do.
But mostly Kathleen cleans and cleans, cleans and cleans,
As though the home she lives in's still Kathleen's.
And it's bustling Kathleen's most repeated chore
To wipe and clean and polish Whernside ward's locked door.
Her caressing fingers coaxed, coaxed accordion's chords,
But can't press the door code that opens Whernside ward.
[Young Kath sings, to the tune of Oh, You Beautiful Doll]
Yeah, a motorbike bride, I'm Kath the motorbike bride!
Harold and me, we used to court on
A BSA and then a Norton.
Harold, him steering and me, me in the car at the side;
Motorbikes and mountains, me and Harold when
Up Mickle Fell and up Pen-y-Ghent -
c- c- c- c-
Can't you still tell from my stride?
And together we biked till every good mountain was seen,
Wrapped up well in warm windjammers,
Gazed at peaktop panoramas -
Those long vistas of green, those great long vistas of green -
Climbed up Whernside, Yorkshire's toughest peak,
So out of puff, we couldn't speak -
[puff] [puff] [puff] [puff]
Till Harold said "I love you Kathleen!
"I love you Kathleen,
"I love you Kathleen."
Nothing, nothing of thoughts, nothing, none of it stays:
Motorbike and mountaineering,
Lost in mist I won't be clearing,
Lost in the blizzard of days, the burying blizzard of days -
From the Whernside tramped up in our mountain gear
To this Whernside wandered with no Harold here
and - and - and -
Those long green vistas all grey.
If I hadn't lost the power to reminisce,
These are the moments that my heart would miss:
m- m- m- mo-
Moments on mountains wi' him.
Him? You'll want to know who
You'll really want to know who!
Who she's been, and cast your eyes on
Cloths she crocheted butterflies on,
Fish Kath caught with her rod,
These fruits that Kathleen once grew.
Kathleen was before Alzheimer's cruelly struck
An angler, climber, dancer, gardener, cook.
Now - now - now - now -
Kath knows nothing she knew.
All I remember is four,
Or at the very most five,
Words that still have got some meaning,
Spending days on Whernside, cleaning.
Not much memory left;
Soon even less'll survive,
With Alzheimer's shredding all remembered times,
The blizzard's blowing but goddammit I'm
g- gl- gla- glad
I'm still Kath and alive!
I'm still Kath and alive,
I'm still Kath and alive...
You can see this section of Black Daisies here, about 21 minutes in. But if you've only got a minute and a half, go for the second half, about 13 minutes in, when an entertainer visits the ward, singing the song whose music was used for Kath - "Oh, You Beautiful Doll". For a moment, Kath ignores him, but suddenly she turns round and begins to dance. Which proves Harrison's point: Kathleen Dickenson is still alive in there, and sometimes you can see her, in the way that sometimes you could catch glimpses of my father as he really was.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.