Poem by Anne Harding Woodworth

FAMINE
​
    . . . the body is dyed
    by illness like a piece of cloth
    by an extraneous color.
            —W.G. Sebald

The dyer makes the linen
a deeper color of dug earth,
boils it in water with acacia
until the natural mole’s-back gray-tan
becomes peat-bog purple.

The well-fed lord is not pleased
with the linen’s new color
and wants it changed back.
The dyer replies that once a beginning unfolds,
recovery of what was is not possible.

And he feels helpless walking home that night
to his beyond-hungry child.
On a cot she lies fevered,
her hair fallen out, her mouth without saliva.

Transports come by every evening
to gather the dead, and they jostle
over the river to a far-from-town field,
where blackened by illness tubers also rest.

The dyer lies down next to his daughter,
and while she sleeps,
he tries to solve the undyeing of a piece of cloth.

from Anne Harding Woodworth, Up From the Root Cellar, Cervena Barva Press, 2006

Click on the link below to listen to Anne read her poem:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/96j6z8srj1rrsg8/Woodworth%E2%80%94Famine.m4a?dl=0

Anne Harding Woodworth, author of
a sixth book of poetry, The Eyes Have It,
with a seventh, Trouble, coming in late 2020.

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