Today the hairdresser comes
to fix our horrid image,
and dining chair is fetched to kitchen.
We wait to sit, for nimble fingers
execute their task by turns.
One hand crimps the tufts, her other
juxtaposes comb and blade.
Chat circles my head: she pauses
only to tilt her own, to gauge
the snick, snick, snick of scissors.
Were some remembrance locked
in every cropped filament,
what triumphs, hurts, sorrows, joys
lie tumbled, stranded there on lino?
In those dead fibres, swept up together,
memory enough to stuff a mattress.
But we remain, with restored crowns
of gauzy grey and wayward browns.
ix.2002
"Why do I yield to that suggestion
ReplyDeleteWhose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings."
Macbeth, Act I (iii)
The idea of writing something centred on a family haircut had been gathering dust in my head for some long while. It wasn't until I happened on the "Scottish play" quotation above that I found a starting point. Hence, ‘horrid’ is used in its archaic sense of rough or bristling; also, Shakespeare's denouement has a conscious echo in ‘restored crowns’.
Sometimes chance lends a hand in the development of a poem. The punning use of ‘locked’ was sheer luck – I might just have easily plumped for ‘held’. Thereafter, as an aficionado of the pun, I sought to employ some more, coming up with ‘stranded’, ‘mattress’ and ‘remain’. All of which persuaded me to retain my working title. I know it’s corny, but if we’re not writing for our own pleasure, why bother?