Old Age of the Teddy-bear
Old Age of the Teddy-bear
Original Text
Jay Macpherson, Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981): 95.
1Ted getting shabby --
2skull beneath skin?
3No, but as matting,
4bare patches, begin,
5nameless maimed baby
6peers out from within.
7Once it was Tadwit,
8now merely It:
9old links with You and Him
10no longer fit:
11the melting snowman’s slide,
12leaving just grit?
13Poor ted? no -- frightening,
14way it seems now:
15angel that shielded me
16gone soft like dough:
17now to that damaged thing
18what do I owe?
19Something in both of us
20never got born:
21too late to hack it out,
22or to unlearn
23needed, familiar pain.
24Come, little thorn.
Publication Start Year
1974
Publication Notes
Welcoming Disaster (Toronto: Saannes, 1974).
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2009
Rhyme
Form