Drawing by Mary
Husted
The
Foundling Museum in London is somewhere I have never got around to visiting but
I hope to do so. I was recently visiting the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and
spotted this book of poems for sale. I just had to buy it as the subject is
close to my heart.
Tokens
for the Foundlings
Edited by Tony
Curtis
Established
in 1741, The Foundling Hospital was essentially Britain’s first orphanage;
admissions to it were catalogued by tokens left by the children’s parents. The
book is an anthology of poems about orphans, childhood and family inspired by
and supporting the work of The Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. Contributors
include Seamus Heaney, Carl Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Carol Rumens, Michael
Longley, George Szirtes and Charles Simic.
Tokens given by mothers to their children on leaving
them at the Foundling Hospital. 18th Century
I
want to post two poems today from the book, the first is a prose poem by Mary
Husted - the drawing at the top of this post is one of many made by Mary
Husted before she was forced to give
up her baby for adoption (they have since been reunited).
The
Shawl
A
memory haunts me. It is the wrapping of a shawl. I am leaving the nursing
home, following two women; one of them has the baby in the shawl. Snow is thick
beneath our feet. It started snowing on Boxing Day and in early February it is
still falling.
The
women turn left – I follow. We walk up a driveway into an empty waiting room.
the doctor comes to meet us, searches my face and looks at the child she
delivered ten days ago. We sit on hard chairs and exchange awkward
pleasantries. The baby is unwrapped from his shawl. He sleeps. I ask to hold
him – here he is in my arms.
In
a corner of the room near the door is a fish tank. A stream of bubbles rises
slowly and continually to the surface as the colourful fish swim to and fro. to
and fro. The three older women watch me with guarded glances. They do not know
what I will do. ‘It is time,’ says one. I take the shawl, soft and woollen, and
very slowly, carefully, with studied tranquillity, I wrap it around the child,
before standing and handing him to one of the women. She takes him and turns,
followed by the other woman, to go out of the door. I watch them go. I am one
of the bubbles in the fish tank.
Mary
Husted.
Rain
The
day I let you go there were floods
in
Wroxeter and Bishopstown.
Leaves,
caramel coloured, were swallowed
by
the rivers and as weather travelled north
windows
ran grey for hours.
Far
from that tiny parlour room,
prams
were being pushed around still dry
parks
or else their thin wheels were hissing
on
wide, wet paths and mothers were thinking
of
feeding times, baths.
The
moment of goodbye was soon over.
Woollen
blankets soft between my fingers;
the
silk hem of the parting dress a breath
on
my skin, and your weight, like kilos of sweet
apples,
swung in my arms.
And
then, I was cradling air and dust
and
stood near the grate, in an awkward tableau
listening
to rain falling into soot.
Each
clear drop sent dark motes into the room
and
the terrible space in my arms gathered all of them in.
Roz
Goddard