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| 11 September 2022 |
The Indigenous People of Canada have a belief that is mirrored in other parts of America. The idea is that if you survive winter you will live for another year. I see this as having a parallel with a garden in which annuals die (but their seeds survive) and perennials take a rest until the next spring.
Spring can be a joyous season with the promise of life and
colour in a garden.
My Rosemary fell ill in the autumn of 2020 and died on December 9 2020.
But for many, and for me especially, autumn is a season for melancholic reflection. At my age of 80 I am subject to that Indigenous idea of the possibility of not living to see another spring.
In December of 2021 I went to Buenos Aires to escape a Christmas without Rosemary. I was sitting on a wing chair in the lobby of my Hotel Claridge on Tucumán almost corner with Florida. I believe it was noon. I was reading a book I had purchased earlier in the day.
The book was Poesía Completa - Alejandra Pizarnik It is full of poems of love and death and many are extremely short. I was looking at the elevator almost imagining that any moment the door would open and out would come out my smiling Rosemary. It was at that precise moment, of a frustrated longing, that I realized that reading Pizarnik was making me fall in love all over again with Rosemary.
Today I was visited by my youngest daughter Hilary. After lunch and walking Niño around the block I drove her home to Burnaby. I had some pleasant moments chatting with my two granddaughters. I then left. By my car door I spotted this maple leaf showing early and very lovely touches of a coming autumn.
I knew, as I was driving home, that I had to scan it and somehow use it for the blog I am writing now.
I opened my Pizarnik book (she is Argentine) and went to page 172 and I knew what I would find (I will place my poor translation into English after):
Sentido de Su Ausencia
si yo me atrevo
a mirar y a decir
es por su sombra
unida y tan suave
a mi nombre
allá lejos
en la lluvia
en mi memoria
por su rostro
que ardiendo en mi poema
dispersa hermosamente
un perfume
a amado rostro desaparecido
The poem is neutral on who the absent person is. I will make it my female Rosemary
A feeling of her absence
if I dare
to look and say
it is because of her shadow
together and gentle
to my name
there far away
in the rain
in my memory
by her face
which burning in my poem
beautifully spreads
a perfume
to a loved disappeared face
