A Photograph
by Shirley Toulson is a heart-touching short poem about memories that we gather
in our lives. Certainly we have no hold over time-span of our life but we can
bring alive reminisces of bygone time through pictures and photographs. This
poem is based on the similar lines. Let’s understand this poem briefly, stanza
by stanza.
The cardboard
shows me how it was
When the two
girl cousins went paddling
Each one
holding one of my mother’s hands,
And she the
big girl – some twelve years or so.
In the first
stanza, the poet is referring the photograph as a cardboard. The photograph has
three girls, the bigger one is the poet’s mother, and other two small girls are
her mother’s cousin. The small girls are holding the hands of her mother. And
that time, according to the image in the photo, her mother was around twelve
years old.
All three
stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle
with the camera, a sweet face
My mother’s,
that was before I was born
And the sea,
which appears to have changed less
Washed their
terribly transient feet.
This stanza
describes the background of the picture, which is of the sea. The person who is
taking their picture is the uncle of poet’s mother. It is clear that all three
girls love sea vacation and they are at the seaside. The girls are smiling so
wide that it seems their grin is about to touch their side hair. Also, the poet
expresses that the sweet face of her mother is of before marriage, when the poet
wasn’t born. They are standing at the sea line, in the waters, as the tides are
washing their transient feet. Here transient means changeable i.e. that one day
these girls will grow up and their feet will grow in size as well. The poet has
emphasized on one prominent nature of life i.e. change. Thus, she says that the
sea changes less with time but humans have to change, which is something
inevitable.
She’d laugh
at the snapshot. “See Betty
And Dolly,”
she’d say, “and look how they
Dressed us
for the beach.” The sea holiday
was her past,
mine is her laughter. Both wry
With the
laboured ease of loss.
This stanza is
based on imagination the poet makes for her mother. The poet assumes what would
be her mother’s reaction upon seeing this photograph after many years. She
would have made laugh of it. Further, the poet says that sea holiday was her
mother’s past and the poet’s past was her mother’s laughter. They both (poet
and her mother) laugh at their losses while accepting the truth of time.
Now she’s has
been dead nearly as many years
As that girl
lived. And of this circumstance
There is
nothing to say at all,
Its silence
silences.
The last
stanza is bit melancholy because it talks about the death of her mother. The
poet puts that her mother is dead for as long as the age of that girl in the
photograph. It means her mother died twelve years ago, because in the
photograph the bigger girl seems to be around twelve. The topic of death is so
morbid that the poet feels that its silence sounds silent, it is a thing of
paradox.
Comments
Post a Comment