Back to Czechia today, to a contemporary poet. Kateŕina Rudčenková,
born 1976, is also a playwright and photographer, although her focus is on poetry.
I don’t know much more about her than what I get from her poems, but I really
like her stuff. I’m giving you two by way of examples.
“Come Nightfall” speaks to me because it captures that continuo of
unease that most people feel about aging—the one that threatens to take over
the melody with each passing year. Lifestyle influencers yap on and on about
how we’re too youth-obsessed and should learn to embrace our years, but leaving
aside the aesthetic side of the process, very few of us indeed escape the tightening
physical limitations that advancing age brings. Loss of flexibility, increased
pain, lessened mobility, fading eyesight—dunno about you, but they piss the
hell out of me. Rudčenková encapsulates this perfectly. (Very perspicacious in
one who hasn’t hit 50 yet.)
The last line is a corker, tho, as she turns her commentary around.
“Come Nightfall”
That evening stream of people with their lingering voices
the diminishing light withdrawing from the streets
I don’t want to grow old like the woman at the next table
whose lines are so deep as the pattern on her partner’s pullover
I don’t want to grow old like the woman at the second table
whose hair resembles a wig more than a wig could ever resemble
hair
I don’t want my face to be lost in the shop-window of spectacles
and most of all I don’t want my own body
to clamp me tight like a narrow ship’s cabin
all those radiant people and wrecks, I among them
exposing my body to the sun
and my life to random interpretations.
“Yes, I live inside the piano” is from the collection Poetry Not Written for Children that
Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy, by Lemony Snicket. I cannot tell how how
much it appeals to me. In fact, I’m considering printing it out and taping it
to my (closed) office door.
Yes, I live inside the piano,
but there is no need for you
to come and visit me.
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