The Tree, The Table and Me ~ Carran
(click here to see a pdf with the poem laid out like it should be)
The Tree, The Table and Me
Me:
Are you going to tell me about the birth of this table?
Was it difficult?
Did it happen on an assembly line or was she formed on the handyman’s lathe?
In the corridor or delivery room?
Tree:
No, at Ikea.
Me:
Was he there at the birth?
Tree:
Yes, he was Head of Packaging.
Pause
Me:
When they braced her up did she fit together well?
Did she match?
Did she mitre in right?
Tree:
I think so.
They didn’t tell her fortune or her future.
She didn’t know what she would be when she was all grooved up.
She was a life in a whole line of others:
all felled down, logged up and sent off in a flat bed lorry in the direction of Ikea, Warrington, after the storm.
Table:
I am a reincarnation of something you can climb onto,
stand on safely,
no wobbling:
a dinner servicer,
a flat-pack.
All synchronised, patterned and put together with diagrammatic precision
Complete with me silver bits in me own plastic bag.
Somehow, later, I ended up here
propped up against a long lost ancestor and now I’m bawling
like a bough-broken baby,
all felled down and brow beaten,
all washed up and trying so hard to be upstanding.
Pause
It’s bloody cold on this edge
where the wind blows in from the north, south, east and west.
Pause
Tree:
When the poisons came
we gritted our teeth and
layer upon layer, bark upon bark
we hardened our souls
of soft soppy soft wood.
Pause
Me:
They’re malleable in the factory,
but these ageless ancestors
stride the sand filled regions of the north, south, east and west of England
where the coast crumbles while the sea marches forward
with time past, time present, time future.
And I am trying to do the same: prop myself up on the ancestors,
Trying to be like them, understand them, the ancient ones.
But I can’t, I’m from Ikea.
They are time.
They have been here
Longer.
They are the longest, tallest, most robust, most weathered and withered of all.
They are trees and I am me.
Now see the film and read the blog about this poem and its context. It's bloody amazing - ed.
The Tree, The Table and Me
Me:
Are you going to tell me about the birth of this table?
Was it difficult?
Did it happen on an assembly line or was she formed on the handyman’s lathe?
In the corridor or delivery room?
Tree:
No, at Ikea.
Me:
Was he there at the birth?
Tree:
Yes, he was Head of Packaging.
Pause
Me:
When they braced her up did she fit together well?
Did she match?
Did she mitre in right?
Tree:
I think so.
They didn’t tell her fortune or her future.
She didn’t know what she would be when she was all grooved up.
She was a life in a whole line of others:
all felled down, logged up and sent off in a flat bed lorry in the direction of Ikea, Warrington, after the storm.
Table:
I am a reincarnation of something you can climb onto,
stand on safely,
no wobbling:
a dinner servicer,
a flat-pack.
All synchronised, patterned and put together with diagrammatic precision
Complete with me silver bits in me own plastic bag.
Somehow, later, I ended up here
propped up against a long lost ancestor and now I’m bawling
like a bough-broken baby,
all felled down and brow beaten,
all washed up and trying so hard to be upstanding.
Pause
It’s bloody cold on this edge
where the wind blows in from the north, south, east and west.
Pause
Tree:
When the poisons came
we gritted our teeth and
layer upon layer, bark upon bark
we hardened our souls
of soft soppy soft wood.
Pause
Me:
They’re malleable in the factory,
but these ageless ancestors
stride the sand filled regions of the north, south, east and west of England
where the coast crumbles while the sea marches forward
with time past, time present, time future.
And I am trying to do the same: prop myself up on the ancestors,
Trying to be like them, understand them, the ancient ones.
But I can’t, I’m from Ikea.
They are time.
They have been here
Longer.
They are the longest, tallest, most robust, most weathered and withered of all.
They are trees and I am me.
Now see the film and read the blog about this poem and its context. It's bloody amazing - ed.