The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Friday Poem on 17/06/22

We chose ‘Eventually’ by Michael Laskey to be our Friday Poem this week because it is both deeply moving and tightly crafted. Its subject matter is raw and painful, but Laskey handles it with compassion and delicacy. It’s hard to make poetry look this easy, but Laskey’s lightness of touch carries it. Respect.

Eventually

yes, she gave up conversation.
She’d lift her chin and finger
her neck, feeling for the stoma —
her trial and almost always error —
to seal it tightly enough to speak

intelligibly in that growling
voice which sounded like no one
she knew. It must have put her off,
the effort and all that expectant
concentration we turned on her

slightest remark. So much unspoken.
Forget it, she’d mouth and wave us on,
listening at first, then drifting off
into this — for me too suddenly 
urgent — taciturnity.

Michael Laskey is a full time freelance poet, editor, and tutor. He has published five poetry collections, most recently The Man Alone: New & Selected Poems (Smith|Doorstop, 2008) and Weighing the Present (Smith|Doorstop, 2014), and three pamphlets. His first two collections were Poetry Book Society Recommendations: Thinking of Happiness (Peterloo, 1991) and The Tightrope Wedding (Smith|Doorstop, 1999), which was also shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He founded and co-edited poetry magazine Smiths Knoll and co-founded and directed the International Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. He lives in Suffolk. Michael Laskey’s website is here.

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