Birthdays
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The game is metaphor. "Birthdays : reassuring corners in the long, dark room of time." "Reminder knots," another voice proposes. "Birthdays are reminders time is heartless, beauty fades." There is no string of time unravelling till the end is cut, only a dark pool swirling— letters, matches, galliwasps, toothpaste tubes and railway tickets, myriad markers from our lives in seminal confusion, falsified by cuckoo-clocks and calendars. I, celebrating birthdays in the whirlpool, dream: something will grow in time.
Mervyn Morris retired from the University of the West Indies, where he was a professor of creative writing and West Indian literature. His books of poetry include The Pond (1973), Shadowboxing (1979), Examination Centre (1992), and On Holy Week (1976). He is also the author of "Is English We Speaking" and Other Essays (1999).
