Another Knitting Poem

MEMORIAL SWEATER I’m starting my magnum opus: it will be my memorial sweater. I can’t see yet how it will end but it starts with ribbing made of rain on circular needles, so that the sleeves, when they wear out, can be replaced like choruses: Raglan cheers or batwing sighs, depending on circumstance. I do know I’ll have shoes for pockets, the soles worn out from dancing, I hope, to inherited tunes and some new. I’ll have a Hall of Fame: a panel in Aran with cameos of Milton, Herbert. I’d like a boat in the story – if you can knit  splicing comes easy – and a sea of triple waves for voyages. I’ll have a computer linked to the eyes of Hawaiian telescopes, so I can view the mottle of early nebulae which will be a large feature of my work. I’d like it to be a pleasure to wear, not tight round the neck or under the arms. I want Moorish whispering galleries and orange groves, the breath of moss, the occasional desert… I must start soon. It’s cooling and, as evening comes on terrified, I hear soft whirrs: the pollen-heavy moths of time. by Gwyneth Lewis