|
Ulla Printz-Påhlson (10 February 1930 – 26 December 2019)
Dear Ulla, now you’ve passed away, I don’t know who among
us lucky enough to have known you isn’t overwhelmed with
sad and happy memories, both at once, images of memories
and memories of images – every one of them deep and kind,
magnanimous and funny, tough and gentle, brisk and yielding,
tolerant and patient – the way you were. All memories of you
are of abundance, including your depthless plenitude of sorrow
at the death of Finn, your gentle son, following Göran’s passing.
But you knew and shared plenty of the plenty of plenty too,
those parties you put together for New Year’s Eve, the big
table in your kitchen brimming over, like Chaucer’s Frankeleyn’s,
with wines, beers, ciders, akvavit, thick chunky wooden board
loaded with loaves, crusted, poppyseed-sprinkled, rye, black, brown,
pastries, cheeses, varieties of blended and rare malted barleys,
meats carved and uncarved, peppery salted and pickled herring,
body-food, soul-food, mind-food.
And now, as time’s fan opens
yet wider, more memories unfold. I’d thought them tucked away
for ever. And out of each unfolding pleat, more pleats get
unwrapped, and more images peek, swell, rise – vivid, fresh, vital.
Like that familiar sardonic irony in your husky
voice whenever you came across or heard about or crossed
paths with cruelty, stupidity, injustice, inhumanity. And
then, evenings of quieter, intenser tête-à-tête talk
over your dinners, with jazz or folk playing on an LP
in the deep background, Parker, Coltrane, Piaf, Woody Guthrie,
The Shoals o’ Herring, The Fair Flow’r o’ Northumberland, Twa Corbies,
This land is your land and my land – whichever land or country.
And then that run-down back-road corner pub Göran and you
converted in Norfolk Street, facing the Man on the Moon,
yards from the primary school, close by the fish and chip shop,
where again I hear you both alternately grinning, arguing,
agreeing, reflecting, refining beliefs, ideas, ideals,
themes turning on poetry, politics, wars, hopes, despairs,
and longings for a better, juster world.
And then the ways
you loved your children Unn and Finn and your grandson Olof
and did so without possessive double-bind or guilt-trip,
and how in quiet constancy you never failed to tend,
test, tease, tease out and defend Göran, even from his own
fears, whenever he retreated deep into himself, growling
shy and bear-like into his great white beard, puffing his way
on his pipe through long protracted silences – through which
you defended and guarded that voluminous big-hearted
mind and abundant magnanimous imagination of his
that held so many intricate spaces in its hidden corners
for language’s finest gifts to grow in.
But of all the images
of you that surface now untarnished, simultaneously vying
with one another for attention, what rises most vividly
out of memory’s depths is you simply being in that big
house you and Göran shared in Stapleford, opposite the Rose,
on the corner of the main road from Great Shelford to Sawston
where the village street wound past Bar Lane along Haverhill Road
to Wandlebury and the Gog-Magog Hills – that lovely long
white house diagonal to the junction, with its own gravelled
driveway, and the field where horses grazed behind the big back
garden – that’s where most vividly I see you now, dear Ulla,
elegant, tasteful, natural, funny, ironic, full of your own most
particular strengths, your gentleness, your civilised gentility –
in that big magnanimous home standing diagonal
to time and tide, quietly and firmly attentive to all directions
at once, with a broad, kind smile on your face – and that’s how
here I commend and praise your passage now and for all time
remember you and turn again to the rest of this song.
Cambridge, January 2020
Poetic Voices
|
 |
