The Seventh Age

by Enriqueta Carrington

At ninety-two she scatters all she owns,
the crumbling books, the string of dusty pearls,
her mother’s face in faded sepia tones,
a man’s young smile, the snips of baby curls.
She’s careful not to leave us any mess,
I won’t be needing it is all she’ll say.
Her body too grows sparer, lighter, less;
already she is casting it away.

Supporting roles were hers, she’ll never know
why we applaud those parts she thought so small
or how her understatement stole the show.
We cry encore, she gives no curtain call,
we don’t see when she slips into the wings;
its timing true, her heart has cut its strings.


Enriqueta Carrington’s poetry in Spanish and English has appeared most recently in The Shit Creek Review, The Chimaera, and Contemporary Sonnet. Her poetry translations have appeared in several journals, including Rattapallax and A Gathering of the Tribes. She is the translator of several volumes of poetry, including “Treasury of Mexican Love Poems” (Hippocrene Books).
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~carringt/Poetry
« Previous Next »

Pat Jones
Published 28 July 2010