MORE ON SMALLS

So last week it was small poems for washing up with, but I forgot to mention one.                                                                            

Not sure how I forgot, but maybe it’s because it’s in the middle of the puddings, when actually it has nothing to do with recipes or cooking. Except possibly a connection with one of the ingredients not being there.

By ‘the puddings’, I mean Aunt Margaret’s Pudding, Alison Brackenbury’s book full of more than just poems and more than just recipes.

Somewhere in the middle of this book there is a very tiny poem. But a tiny poem can punch above its weight.

It’s called ‘Lincolnshire Water’ and goes like this, and this is all there is – shortest poem in the book:

Here is strong land, whose grass
does not spill foaming milk,
where I still hear, in February,
taps hiss cold silk.

That’s an old poet’s trick – starting with a statement that says what something is not.

No dairy farming in Lincolnshire, then – no crying over spilled milk. No, this little poem is building towards something else – a last line that’s perilously hard to say out loud. Try it. 

Taps   hiss   cold   silk.

Your mouth has to make each of those monosyllables separately. Each makes its own clear sound, with ‘s’ and ‘k’ the loudest consonants. It’s a line of only four syllables, but long long long on sound and resonance. Each word carries its own full stress and weight (‘spondee’, if you like the proper metrical term).

Taps   hiss   cold   silk.

Now there’s a poem for washing up with!