Lightness

Lightness

It was your lightness that drew me,
the lightness of your talk and your laughter,
the lightness of your cheek in my hands,
your sweet gentle modest lightness:
and it is the lightness of your kiss
that is starving my mouth,
and the lightness of your embrace
that will let me go adrift.

Meg Bateman
her translation from the original Gaelic

This is one of those poems that has stayed in my mind since I first read it, in Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley, which is not quite perfect but is the best anthology of modern poetry I have ever come across. Leafing through it, now familiar, over the weekend, this was the one that stuck with me.

[By a miracle I have remembered my mother's birthday two whole days in advance. Her passion and obsession is Gaelic music, like the poet discovered in her youth. I am almost glad that Lightness, the book that this is from, seems to be out of print, because it would feel too personal, even if only I knew it. But, thanks to the internet, Bateman's second book, with poems both in Gaelic and in English, will be arriving at my house even before she does, back from another trip to the Outer Hebrides.]