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Summary Gr12 Poetry - "Reciprocities"
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Reciprocitiesby Cathal Lagan
, ABOUT THE POET:
Cathal Lagan was born in Northern Ireland in 1937. He moved to South Africa
where he became a priest. He worked mainly in Port Elizabeth, Alice and King
William’s Town.
Thereafter he taught English literature at the University of Fort Hare. Lagan has been
publishing poetry in journals since the 1960s.
He was a founding member of Ecca, an informal group of colleagues and friends who get
together to work on poetry projects.
This poem is a tribute to his beloved mother. He reflects on the relationship between
them. He remembers how his mother would make him hold skeins of wool so that she
could roll it into a ball to re-use for her knitting..
Remembering that his mother knitted for him, he imagines that he now ‘knits’ these lines
of this poem in her memory.
, Reciprocities by Cathal Lagan
for my mother
She gave me skeins of wool
To hold out (like a priest at Mass),
With stern rubrics not to fidget, while she
Wound it into a ball, unwinding me,
Unravelling my hands and arms, checking 5
My lapses with a gentle tug
When I wandered off through the images
Her chat had made, for though
She kept the line between us taut
She kept my heart at ease with her talk. 10
And when her ball compacted grew,
And my few strands fell limp away,
I knew there was no loss, for she
Would knit it back again to fit me perfectly.
But richer still, 15
I see today these lines are drawn out from me
To knit through this faltering verse
A thread of memory
Time has pulled away from consciousness.
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