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MAXIMUM
BABY
Within
walls moonlit—pewter, malachite—
of
little Baba’s room in Deerswood Court,
I
lullabied our daughter into sleep,
woken
at two, thirty-five years ago.
Today
our Baba is a mother too.
Her
Maxie Laszlo, three months old,
fluffs
all the luggage of his new existence
throughout
a house evolved to take things in,
home
of two grandparents in Copthall Gardens.
Formula
food, a pushchair, steriliser,
car
seat and cot, a baby-bouncer and
all
the routines of coochy-coo (to order)
and
rhubarb talk and arbitrary fists
that
barely rub his ears.
Kick-boxer’s
legs predictably
take
up the frog position ready to
kung-fu
at nappy-change, no warning given.
This
innocence, so rich in pukes and farts,
serenely
sleeps when, if, the mood is in him.
Otherwise
he likes to eye the trees.
Faces
that visit. Even faces on
TV.
If
all the universes that there might be
have
a demanding centre, it is here.
Whatever
n dimensions our lives have,
(money,
hospitals and funerals,
and
all those freaks of recent knowledge (‘fact’):
worm holes
and worlds next door)—
the
mandate centre of our universe
is
little Maxie Laszlo, Baba’s son.
See
how the women (may it ever be)
lard
him with smiles, tirelessly, endlessly.
—Though
I hope later ladies
are
not so obsessed with reckoning his weight.
‘New
life!’ beams an old Baba-friend,
generous,
jaded, thirty-five years old.
It
is well-meaning but makes me afraid.
I’ve
listed above some areas of control.
I
have left out the ones between war zones.
Control?
Today I broke a plastic wheel
on
your pushchair upon an awkward path
(and
got put in the dog-house by the women).
That’s
what life’s like, son, we are at
the
mercy of our clumsiness and women
and
rotten engineers.
We
got the wheel-part mended
in
a back-alley workshop in Crouch End.
I
had to take a pill to find the place.
When
you read this, whatever’s gone amiss
you’ll
know, I hope, that only
very
partial blame can fall on us.
Most
elders do their best.
They
filled their houses
with
what they thought you wanted.
When
the wheel breaks again, you will
yourself
see it’s repaired. However
it’s done,
you
can look back and for the method used
part-thank,
part-blame, your Mum and Dad,
your
(Grand) Papa and Mummi, and whoever
else
chipped in with lessons or with love.
Part-thank
them and part-blame.
But
down and up, dear boy,
it
is ourselves that make us what we are.
Be
proud or humble, my advice
is
keep a sense of humour. Like
‘He
valued his grandfather’s watch because
the
old guy sold it to him on his deathbed.’
(Origin
Jewish maybe, via great-great-grandad,
unknown
and illegit.)
Sing
to your baby, Max, as I did once:
‘Little
Baba must go to sleep,
because
she’s very, very, very tired.’
Alan
Marshfield
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