Request To A Year by Judith Wright is a poignant reflection on the passing of time and the inevitability of change. Through the use of vivid imagery and evocative language, the poet explores the human desire to hold on to moments that have already slipped away.

Request To A Year

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,

I should like it to be the attitude

of my great- great- grandmother,

legendary devotee of the arts,

 

who having eight children

and little opportunity for painting pictures,

sat one day on a high rock

beside a river in Switzerland

 

and from a difficult distance viewed

her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,

drift down the current toward a waterfall

that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

 

while her second daughter, impeded,

no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,

stretched out a last-hope alpenstock

(which luckily later caught him on his way).

 

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;

And with the artist’s isolating eye

My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.

The sketch survives to prove the story by.

 

Year, if you have no Mother’s day present planned,

Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

Judith Wright

 

You might be interested: Growing Old by Matthew Arnold 

 

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