Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age
Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age
Original Text
Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976): 106
1I know I change
2have changed
3but whose is this vapid face
4pitted and vast, rotund
5suspended in empty paper
6as though in a telescope
7the granular moon
8I rise from my chair
9pulling against gravity
10I turn away
11and go out into the garden
12I revolve among the vegetables,
13my head ponderous
14reflecting the sun
15in shadows from the pocked ravines
16cut in my cheeks, my eye-
17sockets 2 craters
18among the paths
19I orbit
20the apple trees
21white white spinning
22stars around me
23I am being
24eaten away by light
Publication Start Year
1970
Publication Notes
The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970).
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2009
Special Copyright
"Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age" © Margaret Atwood. Printed gratis, and specifically for Representative Poetry Online, with permission of the author. As published in Selected Poems (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976). Any other use, including reproduction for any purposes, educational or otherwise, will require explicit written permission from Margaret Atwood.