More than forty years ago!

My mother was a child prodigy as an artist. On one of her paintings my grandmother has written in pencil, “asked for by Sickert”. I am pleased with this painting of her crossing a ploughed field in full hunting kit as I feel I have managed it in my mother’s style.

ANIMAL CRACKERS

Anchored on the stumps of mountains,

Up soars Manhattan, that glittering assemblage;

A giant barge, steel-sided,

Cleaving rivers apart, and yet,

Wherever it can, nature insinuates itself.

Weeds negotiate cracks – even Manhattan

Almost approaches wilderness at

Inwood Hill, perched on its northern tip,

Where pheasants nest, foxes prowl

On slopes once occupied by the Indians.

Off its shore there are forests and wetlands,

Including the ponds of Jamaica Bay,

Breeding baldpates, pintails,

Greater and lesser scaup, skimmers, terns,

Glossy ibises, egrets, and even visited

By the bald eagle. All the same, New Yorkers

Would not know from watching it on the box

Whether a cow was sick or not

As any hillbilly might. To the urbanite,

Farm animals are desirable, with more correspondence

Concerning them than any other perversion.

You see less of animals than people. People

Give you diseases. Animals do not sue

For alimony, nor can they get you pregnant.

x

Recently my mother visited New York.

She cannot see what she looks directly at,

Yet at seventy-six she managed to get

From Gramercy Park to the Bronx Zoo and back.

Having been a vet, she was more alert

To Fragonard’s cow at the Met

Than handling and stuff like that.

The same was true for Dubuffet’s cow at MoMA.

Seated in the sculpture garden

Next to a Maillol, off to her right

She could see a goat. Picasso’s goat, I said.

Then I headed for the bookshop,

Telling her to stay put.

Back with a cut-price Muybridge,

I caught sight of her straightening up

Behind its metal rump.

Mother had goosed the goat,

Establishing when her kids would drop.

Luckily there were no guards about.

x

Read my book about my mother – The Best Deborah Stories – here