Summer by Ali Smith

Author:Ali Smith [Smith, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101870792
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

because the rose bowl is here before you

and it cannot be forgotten, it is full

of being, the roses leaning forward,

holding out, never giving way, holding their own

so we too can go as far as we can, like the roses do

How do you like my translation? It is from memory, so might be very wrong. All the speakers here speak from memory. It is quite a feat. The other day I was really thinking of you when the debate we had was: Should The Artist Portray His Own Age. I tell you Hanns there was nearly a fistfight. And you would be so proud of me, because I spoke up and said, but what about the artist portraying her own age, and when I did I was nearly laughed out of the room, but at least it stopped the fistfight and let them all agree with each other and have something in common again. But I am thinking of your pictures a lot too. There are artists here. They are good but it is yours I have in my head. The one with the flowers that I thought had faces discernible, if you looked, in the shapes of their petals, means that now I can’t not see a face in all real flowers

am I saying it wrong? She was annoyed when I said the flowers she painted had faces. She is no longer sixteen, she is twenty now, maybe she thinks such things childish and behind her

and one of the other things I have been remembering to tell you is that I am carving you a wooden bird out of a piece of chair leg. I regret to pass on the information too that nowadays I have none of that nice lotion with me that you told me about and had been keeping my skin soft as you said it would, and even worse I no longer have the ointment the doc gave me for the place behind my ear where the wart came off, and so I am using any oil or grease that comes my way, but sparingly, because not often very nicely scented.

I know you will be interested that I went to see Dr Streliska, he is a handwriting expert and graphologist in the camp. Our father had been to see him and Dr S looked at a piece of his handwriting and said, ‘you are a man who loves to grow things.’ So our father felt most pleased.

‘He said nothing about you being a person who likes to suffocate butterflies, open their wings when they’re dead and stick a pin through their torsos, then?’ I said.

I wish above all I had had something written of yours to show Dr S. He would have said, ‘why this is a king of queens! A queen of kings!’ I don’t doubt.

I showed him a piece in my own hand and he said, ‘you are a man for many seasons.’ I am pleased though I have no idea what it means or how he can say such things by looking at scrawl.

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