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| From the book Old Songs | | (1980-1981) |  |
| Old Women | Like an old patient artist,
I like to look at the faces
of pious and nasty old women:
Their mortal lips
and the immortal power
that draw those lips together,
(as if an angel were sitting there
and setting out money in piles,
five-kopek coins, lightweight one-kopeks…
“Shoo!” he says to children,
birds, and beggars,
“Shoo,” he says, “Go away;
can’t you see what I’m doing?”)
I look, and sketch in my mind:
like, as it were, myself before a dark mirror.
Gerald S. Smith
***
Old Women
Patient as an old master,
I love to study the faces
of pious, spiteful old women,
the morality of their lips,
and the immortality of the power
that pressed those lips together,
(like an angel squatting
and stacking coopers in piles,
five copecks, and light copeck pieces…
“Shoo!” he says to the children,
the birds and the beggars,
“Shoo, go away”, he tells them:
can’t you see what I’m doing?”) –
I stare, and in my mind I sketch them,
like my own face, in a glass darkly.
Catriona Kelly | |
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|  | | Old Women |
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