A Woman filled with Hope: A Table Poem

Alongside Daniel Regan, Marysa Dowling and Wendy French, I work with second year medical students at King’s College on their Clinical Humanities module. Wendy set a task for last Friday’s seminar, to write in response to Edip Cansever’s table poem. I really enjoyed writing within the framework of the table, as if Cansever (and Wendy) had offered a set of tools which enabled a much easier shaping and ordering of language. I worked with hope, something I think we all need given the times in which we live. I have been lucky, but I have still missed the company of family and friends, most especially sharing food and stories and laughter around a table. This exercise appeared as a gift and enabled a shift within me. I’ve added Cansever’s poem beneath mine and encourage you to write your own version and perhaps share with friends. I’m hoping, before too long, there’ll be more than three settings at our table.

Wendy’s Instructions:

Begin with:

A man/a woman filled with … 

And continue with all the things, both tangible and intangible things that you would put on your table. 

A Woman filled with Hope…

Scrubbed the table clean of all that had settled there

Took a soft cloth and wax

Polished it anew

And then stood watching, 

Taking in this clean and bright and sun golden thing

She waited on this table

Smoothed across its width a linen cloth into which she had poured all the missed out tenderness of touching

Gathered together plates and bowls from distant corners

Knives, forks, spoons and glasses

All Polished and buffed ‘til gleaming

And all placed on the table,

As if Vermeer might step into the room

In the bowls all the warmth she’d been storing

Into the glasses all the stories she’d been collecting 

At each setting a linen napkin, pressed as if a dress to be worn for the first and last time.

A pitcher of brim full of potential, ready for pouring

And at the centre, for everyone’s pleasure, roses and rosemary.

For there were things to remember and others to forget and much for which to hope.

And there should always be room for hope.

She opened the door and let the sunlight in.

Table

A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sounds of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn’t love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he placed there.

Now that’s what I call a table!
It didn’t complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.

 from the Turkish of Edip Cansever, translated by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast