A cycle for Milla
1.
I've
got the photo, not the name.
At one
day old you're looking pensive,
hands
arranged in thought.
Have
you made the right decision,
propped
there on the edge of chance?
Just
hours ago you slipped out from
the
broken amniotic
to
greet the universe —
although
you've yet to see its stars.
A
nipple is the first
of
all your consolations;
your
mother's mother hovers,
knowing
what she knows.
Three
more of us are weeks off yet,
working
on our diaries.
Your
acolytes, those stunned beginners,
survive
as if they're on a wave,
inventing
every minute.
2.
Two months —
and still your name escapes them.
'Baby
Girl' will not quite do —
for
all their cooed endearments.
They've
tossed some tags about already,
knowing
they won't stick.
One
with five grand syllables
reducible
to two
runs
in front of all the rest
but
can't quite win the race.
A
name, these days, is no small gift:
a
gingham dress or stone-washed jeans,
clothes
to be grown into.
Some
countries mandate saints or heroes;
others
number off from 'One'.
The
Registrar of Births and Deaths
(and
Marriages) declares
a
bureaucratic interest;
his
patience lasts for two months only.
Already you are
eloquent
concerning small
discomforts,
that milky world of
irritation
all babies must be
heir to —
and
yet you've still to speak your name,
a
word or words you can't give back,
a
force to shape you, this way, that —
expectations,
fencings in.
The
playground, too, will have its part;
the
verbal ingenuities,
its
rings of nastiness.
Your
elders stand about, admire —
and
are disturbingly alert
to
every connotation.
Meanwhile
I, your father's father,
await
your name's arrival.
I
have my own for you already,
personally
bestowed and spelt,
two
syllables. I know too well
the
word your parents will discover
must
be the first of all
your
life's small braveries
and
lovely contradictions.
3.
The
distances, how strict they are,
those
arguments of time and space!
I
follow you in six-month leaps;
each
time you'll be a little taller,
with
gravity to match.
Email
photos down the wire
are
simulacra only.
Your
eyes and ears each time will be
that
half-year cleverer.
Right
now your voice is magpie song
waiting
for its words.
I
hear it on the phone.
Your
jumpsuits will be, month by month,
a
Goldilocks Effect,
too
big, just right and then discarded;
your
shoes each time a little less
absurdly
miniature.
Your
temperament, I know, is taking
shape
from day to day.
I
see it mainly in its stages,
bequeathed
to you from family trees
that
ramify like Moreton Bays.
You
are their double culmination;
all
those accidents that brought you,
chance
by chance by chance.
Slowly
you will come, I hope,
to
know me, trip by trip,
across
the years allowed to us,
extra
hands to push the swing
or
walk you to the shop,
an
incidental figure first
and
slightly out of focus.
I'll
use a name you've yet to say
and
add a layer to your life,
intensify
its complications,
a
voice remembered on the phone,
a
person who will now and then
contrive
to feature in your smile,
relieving
you for just a while
of
all the loving and the long
intensity
of parents.
4.
Four
months old, you're all alertness
glancing
sideways at the lens,
mouth
an O of cool surprise.
Perched
there on your father's midriff,
you're
following your mother's camera.
No
doubt, your father's talking too.
For
a moment, you are split between them:
his
voice, her voice, that way, this.
The
language they employ is strange
although
it does contain a name.
Your
jumpsuit is resplendent pink;
not
a word you know as yet.
You're
in a slant of morning light.
Down
south, I check your sidelong smile.
Is
that O a reprimand
or
does it sue for explanation?
Four
months old and four months new,
you're
at the centre of creation.
5.
Six
months now, a second visit;
the
digipix are turning real.
You're
filling up all four dimensions
with
a light and airy squeal.
Words
are just there out of reach;
there's
almost traction on the floor.
Your
personality's arrived;
your
sense of what the world is for.
You
cry, of course, to get your way
but
no more than you'll need in life.
I
sense a moderation too;
a
drawing back from shallow strife.
Your
bath may not be Cleopatra's
but
you are equally at ease
putting
on a stylish levee
for
your pair of devotees.
Hand-and-eye
coordination
may
need a year or two as yet
before
you're up and playing doubles,
volleying
across the net.
And,
yes, it's true you're nappie-bound;
one
shouldn't rush too far ahead.
You're
mixing solids with your milk;
your
legs are looking quite well-fed.
Mere
images no longer serve;
true
life will always outdo art.
Your
breezy squeals run on before me;
already
you've a half-year start.
6.
At
seven months and on the phone
you're
still not more than birdsong really,
a
sort of strutting on the lawn,
relishing
with each new dawn
the
first ascension of the worms.
Already
I can hear some English
but
what you have is fine for now.
Poetry,
said
Mallarmé,
should
always reach for music.
You're
all feeling, unalloyed;
a
birdlike recklessness of song.
What
is it you're discussing now?
Dependability
of nipples?
The
scary joys of novel fruits?
I
try to walk a straighter line
eschewing
baby talk —
we
drift to a convergence.
Week
by week and call by call
I
hear the grammar of the tribe.
You
find a trader's raw patois
for
dealing with the world.
7.
Well
up on your
two
feet now,
oh
mistress of the
pots
and pans,
flicker
on-and-
off
of switches,
devotee
of
Yes
I Can,
you've
got there with
your
dozen words.
Today,
June 9,
declares
you're one.
How
could my
two
hundred lines
describe
your circuit
round
the sun?
From
Geoff Page's new book 'improving the news' published by Pitt Street
Poetry.
http://pittstreetpoetry.com/geoff-page/
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