Hello hello can you hear me? Hello
I am calling from far away. I can't hear
what, the distance has run out of battery?
You are speaking from a mobile space?
Press zero again? And again?
Can you hear me now?
Yes can I please speak to my mother?
What number have I dialed? The sky
this is the number they gave me. She is not there?
Can I please scream a message for her?
Tell her there is a great need
I saw in my sleep that she had died and I,
a little child, wet myself wailingly
the fear soaked high up there
and it still hasn't dried off.
She should come and change it.
If she can't, can you tell her as well
that it has matured that scare of hers
of the old man who will devour me
if I don't finish eating my food.
It has matured I have become senescence's meal.
Not at a dream's tavern.
At some local soup kitchen run
by the mirror.
---------------------------------------------
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Departures' sound' (2001).
In this poem, Dimoula muses about old age and the fear of dying. It is one of a small number of poems she wrote that refer to motherhood and mothers, and of her own mother.
The poem begins in a very playful almost comical mood. It parodies a long distance phone call, one in which the caller and the receiver cannot establish clear communication. Dimoula is speaking in first person, pretending to make the call herself. It is soon revealed that she is trying to communicate with her deceased mother.
Once the poet addresses her mother, her tone changes and becomes more abrupt and urgent, and the poem switches to its real theme: the fear of dying in old age.
The next to last stanza refers to a popular scare story that (Greek) mothers told their children to force them finish their meals. This story involves an old man who walks in neighbourhoods, dressed in black and holding a black nylon bag, wanting to kidnap children who don't finish eating their meal. Dimoula uses this story to express her own fear of old age, making a parallel between this old man and death, and suggests that now that she is old she fears that death will seek to 'devour' her before she is finished living her life.
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Departures' sound' (2001).
In this poem, Dimoula muses about old age and the fear of dying. It is one of a small number of poems she wrote that refer to motherhood and mothers, and of her own mother.
The poem begins in a very playful almost comical mood. It parodies a long distance phone call, one in which the caller and the receiver cannot establish clear communication. Dimoula is speaking in first person, pretending to make the call herself. It is soon revealed that she is trying to communicate with her deceased mother.
Once the poet addresses her mother, her tone changes and becomes more abrupt and urgent, and the poem switches to its real theme: the fear of dying in old age.
The next to last stanza refers to a popular scare story that (Greek) mothers told their children to force them finish their meals. This story involves an old man who walks in neighbourhoods, dressed in black and holding a black nylon bag, wanting to kidnap children who don't finish eating their meal. Dimoula uses this story to express her own fear of old age, making a parallel between this old man and death, and suggests that now that she is old she fears that death will seek to 'devour' her before she is finished living her life.
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