This week’s poem is chosen for friends who have welcomed a new baby into their family this week and for someone special to me who works with new mothers and mothers-to-be.
See how the true gift never leaves the giver:
Don Paterson (1963—)
returned and redelivered, it rolled on
until the smile poured through us like a river.
Poem 297. Waking With Russell
Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;
and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin
but his own smile, or one I’d rediscovered.
Dear son, I was mezzo del cammin
and the true path was as lost to me as ever
when you cut in front and lit it as you ran.
See how the true gift never leaves the giver:
returned and redelivered, it rolled on
until the smile poured through us like a river.
How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!
I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.
Another sonnet this week, and this one is about the joy we find in the smile of a four-day-old child and how it can deliver us from the life we’ve fallen into.
There are four distinct thoughts in the poem. The first is the narrator and their baby son waking simultaneously face-to-face and the child’s smile which, although tentative at first like the first hints of dawn, strengthens as if his whole being is concentrated in—or possessed by—it. The narrator responds—not with his usual “old hard-pressed grin” but with a smile that reflects the child’s or perhaps rediscovers the genuine, innocent mirth that we can only display at a very young age, a sign of the simple pleasure of waking to see a loved and loving face.
The next thought is that the parent’s own path, lost or perhaps made mediocre (mezzo del cammin could be interpreted as middle of the road) by the passage of the years and the responsibilities of adulthood has been revived and lit up by the sheer joy of their son’s existence.
The third thought develops this: “the true gift never leaves the giver”—this exchange of smiles is a true gift: something that enriches the giver and the recipient so that they exchange roles and repeat the process, so that “the smile poured through us like a river.”
The last two lines emphasise the emotion felt by the parent: “How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men” and their devotion to the child inspired by the smile “I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.”
Sonnets are often classified according to the way the fourteen lines rhyme: there are Petrarchan, Shakespearean measure, Spenserian sonnets and others. This one is Shakespearean measure, meaning that its lines follow the scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
Some of the rhymes are not obvious—these are examples of assonance (or consonance for American readers), where the resemblance between words lies in the sounds of their vowels or their consonants. In the last lines of this poem we see men rhymed with forever—the sound of the ‘e’ in men rhymes with that of the the first ‘e’ in forever. Likewise, began is rhymed with again because the ‘g’ and ‘n’ sounds match. Assonance was memorably defined in “Educating Rita”:
FRANK: Do you know Yeats?
Educating Rita by Willy Russell
RITA: The wine lodge?
FRANK: No, WB Yeats, the poet.
RITA: No.
FRANK: Well, in his poem ‘The Wild Swans At Coole’, Yeats rhymes the word “swan” with the word “stone”. You see? That’s an example of assonance.
RITA: Yeah, means getting the rhyme wrong.
I like this poem because although I have never had small children of my own or directly experienced the sensations and emotions that Paterson describes so adroitly, I can appreciate them and I see the signs in others and I remember the love that shone in Nicola’s face when she looked on her sons.
Links
- Watch Noah Wetherby’s performance on YouTube.