May Sarton

May Sarton, originally named Eleanor Marie Sarton, was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium. She and her family were forced to flee after the invasion by the Reichswehr in 1915, and the family settled in Boston, Massachusetts, when Sarton was just four years old. May Sarton was a prolific author who was long considered by her very loyal readers to be a gifted and sensitive writer of poetry, novels, and journals. Although at first overlooked by literary critics, in the later part of her career reviewers and feminist academics began to discover Sarton's work, lauding her as an important contemporary American author. Source

For My Mother

Once more

I summon you

Out of the past

With poignant love,

You who nourished the poet

And the lover.

I see your gray eyes

Looking out to sea

In those Rockport summers,

Keeping a distance

Within the closeness

Which was never intrusive

Opening out

Into the world.

And what I remember

Is how we laughed

Till we cried

Swept into merriment

Especially when times were hard.

And what I remember

Is how you never stopped creating

And how people sent me

Dresses you had designed

With rich embroidery

In brilliant colors

Because they could not bear

To give them away

Or cast them aside.

I summon you now

Not to think of

The ceaseless battle

With pain and ill health,

The frailty and the anguish.

No, today I remember

The creator,

The lion-hearted.

Published:

1994

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Modernism

Anthology Years:

2024

Themes:

Family

Memory & The Past