Freda Downie poem

Sometime in the 90s, I copied a Freda Downie poem, by hand, onto a lined sheet of paper. It came into my head recently. Not the whole poem, but the sense that it had warranted saving and that years later it still haunted me. It was about flowers and, if not depression, then some dwelling on darkness. What was it called? Having at least remembered the poet’s name, I started googling and was pleased to find this recent article on the poet and her Collected Poems (edited three years after her death by George Szirtes).  And so to Amazon to order the book. I went for a ridiculously cheap secondhand copy. On arrival, it turned out to be an ex-library copy (Portsmouth Central Library) with sad single column of six date stamps. Three in its year of publication, 1996. Three between then and 2004.

Memory had served me well. The poem still startles.

Even the Flowers

Even the flowers hate you.
Loose-tongued, their censure
Breaks every window.
Indoors, you turn to the mirror
For assurance; but silently
They re-arrange themselves
Behind your back.

You open your very own hands
And stare down into them.
Happiness must lie somewhere.
How broken your life-line is.
Unhappiness loosens and falls,
Flooding the fanning valleys.

No matter.
Already you have forgotten
Their simple significant names.