"At the Gate" [by Indran Amirthanayagam]

At the Gate

My mother lies down in her bed to wait,
in a white robe, hair spread on the pillow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

My mother said she couldn’t rise, even late.
She says take her to a nursing home tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

She speaks to her aunt, to mater and pater.
She wants to fly to Ceylon to a bungalow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

Try to move your fingers, feet, shift your gait.
Try to straighten your legs, temple unfurrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

Try, try, fall, try again. This is not fate.
This is obstinacy and wisdom not sorrow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

I will wait by the gate, Mummy, and tell fate,
that angel, to give us ‘til tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate

Of Ithe author of this villanelle,  Terence Winch has noted, 'Indran Amirthanayagam is one of the most remarkable figures roaming the contemporary poetic landscape. Like some of the poets he most admires—Cavafy, Neruda, Hikmet (all mentioned in the poem below)—he is a citizen of the world. Born into the Catholic Tamil community (a minority within a minority) of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1960, he left with his family for England when he was eight, seeking refuge from his native land’s ongoing strife as well as care for an autistic brother. He lived in the U.K. for six years, attending grammar and primary school there. When he was fourteen, the family moved again, this time to Honolulu, where his father, also a poet, had been offered a job. In Hawaii, Indran was one year ahead of Barry Obama, whom he knew slightly, at Punahou School.  In 1978, he left Hawaii for Haverford College in Pennsylvania. After getting his B.A. there, he moved to New York to become, like Lorca, “a poet in New York.” He picked up a master's at the Columbia School of Journalism and remained in New York until 1993, when he got a job with the U.S. Foreign Service, having  become a U.S. citizen in the late ‘80s. >>> For more, click here. The poet was also the "pick of the week" in September 2021.

Comments

[Charlotte Meehan]

What a beautiful, tender, vulnerable celebration of a mother's last days. Each line speaks the realities of old age and dying with such care, leading the reader finally into the sublime with this exquisitely loved giver of life.

[Bill Ehrhart]

Watching Indran interact with his mother in the last years of her life was a deeply moving experience. This poem just as movingly captures the love that bound the two of them together.

[Nancy Naomi Carlson]

A very moving villanelle, Indran.