I want to write a poem. I want to capture a feeling. It is complicated. And yet, I want to make it simple. Reduce it down to an intense singularity of sensation. It isn’t a story as such, more a reaction to something I’ve seen. Something that someone gave me. It is a happening from the past. It isn’t my memory. I wasn’t the one behind the camera and yet, now I have seen it. I wasn’t alive when the film was taken. When the film was made. I was nowhere. I was nothing. Not a jot. And she? She was a child.
She is dressed in a kind of romper suit. It reminds me of the one that Andy Pandy used to wear. It is striped, its legs are wide. She is with another child. Adults surround them. They are expected to play. To preform a kind of play for the adults’ benefit. There is clearly no rapport between the two children. Is it her fault? She is the older child. She has picked up a broom and is sweeping the steps. The other child mimics her. The other child is a blonde poppet, a toddler with a face framed by a cloud of curls.
I remember seeing a picture of that house. Was it that one? The older girl turns to face the camera. Has someone called out to her? In the film her movements are jerky, too fast. There is no sound. A silent picture.
She is beautiful, the older girl. A beautiful child. A child-woman. Her dark wavy hair is pulled back from her face by a hair slide. Winsome. Affecting. She smiles at the man behind the camera. Is she trying to get his attention? The other child is his. She is not. Her parents lurk in the distance. Her father stretches out on a chair, her mother crouches on the ground, her hands outstretched towards her.
Nothing is ever how it seems. This is an new encounter. My encounter. I can only write about my encounter with it for I know nothing else. But there is much to leave out. To write bare. To strip it down, bare. Perhaps the context must be set by the title. And the rest, the shock, the surreal-ness of seeing her, that must become the poem. How do you write such things?
What would her child-voice have sounded like?
