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  • Good Old Days
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Good Old Days

Elma Mitchell

My neck, where love ran
Just under the skin
Is now an old rickety ladder to the brain.

My breasts, a full delight
For child and man,
The setting
To carry rival jewels,
Dangle now untidy,
Unharvested, over-ripe.

The wishbone of my legs
Has changed their wishes’ destination,
Shin repeats to shin,
Welcome, death, you may come in.

I should be cheerless
As a crow in winter fields
When the light is going

But up here, at the top of the spine, behind the eyes,
Curtained a little, but not blind,
Sits a young and laughing mind
Wondering which part of me is telling lies.


Elma Mitchell

from The Human Cage (Peterloo Poets, 1979)

Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Harry Chambers.

Tags:

ageing happiness wrinkles
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Elma Mitchell1919 - 2000

Lanarkshire-born Elma Mitchell went south with a scholarship to Oxford, and remained in England, working as a librarian for the BBC, and latterly as a freelance writer and translator. Her compassionate insights into people’s lives were collected in four...
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