Sonnet To My Mother by George Baker
Most near, most dear, most loved, and most far, Under the huge window where I often found her Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter, Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand, Irresistible as Rabelais but most tender for The lame dogs and hurt birds that surround her,- She is a procession no one can follow after But be like a little dog following a brass band. She will not glance up at the bomber or condescend To drop her gin and scuttle to a cellar, But lean on the mahogany table like a mountain Whom only faith can move, and so I send O all her faith and all my love to tell her That she will move from mourning into morning.
George
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His exuberant exclamation near the end of the poem, 'and so I send O all my faith and all my love to her...'confirms the strength of these feelings. The warm, humorous, delightfully frank way Baker describes his 'irresistible' mother in the intervening lines also convinces us of his strong attachment to her. These feelings are moreover, reinforced by the warm, playful, exuberant tone he employs throughout the poem.
The sonnet form with the necessity for compression that it imposes is particularly suitable for this brief but deeply-felt tribute. In the fourteen lines, Baker provides a vivid and appealing cameo of his mother, not only her large size, but also of her habits, sense of humour, lively, enquiring mind, compassion, loud, exuberant love of life, courage and faith. In the octave of the sonnet, he accumulates vivid impressions of all these characteristics except for the most important ones, her courage and faith, which he reserves for the sestet which provides the sonnet with its point: it is these last two qualities in particular which will enable her to 'move from mourning to morning'
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