Christa Weil, author of SECONDHAND CHIC and IT'S VINTAGE, DARLING! tells how to find, restore, and style the very best of classic past fashion--from haute couture to thrift store coups--in an utterly up-to-date way
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Sing O Muse Week: Thinking Cap
Today's poem imagines a hat that is brimming with ideas about its owner. Which makes perfect sense. We love some of our clothes beyond reason--why shouldn't they love us back?
Your Favourite Hat
Believe me when I tell you that
I long to be your favourite hat
The velvet one. Purply-black
With ribbons trailing at the back
The one you wear to parties, plays,
Assignations on red-letter days
Like a bat in your unlit hall
I’d hang until there came the call
To freedom. To hug your crown
As you set off through Camden Town
To run my fingers through your hair
Unbeknown in Chalcot Square
To let them linger, let them trace
My shadow cast upon your face
Until, on reaching the appointed place
(The pulse at your temple, feel it race!)
Breathless you whisper: ‘At last, at last.’
And once inside, aside I’m cast
There to remain as time ticks by
Nap rising at each moan and sigh
Ecstatic, curling at the brim
To watch you naked, there with him
Until too soon, the afternoon gone
You retrieve me, push me on
Then take your leave, (as ever in haste)
Me eager to devour the taste
Of your hair. Your temples now on fire
My tongue, the hatband as you perspire
To savour the dampness of your skin
As you window-gaze. Looking in
But not seeing. Over Primrose Hill
You dawdle, relaxed now, until
Home Sweet Home, where, safely back
Sighing, you impale me on the rack
Is it in spite or because of that
I long to be your favourite hat?
Roger McGough
poem from the anthology Out of Fashion, by Carol Ann Duffy, ed., Faber and Faber, 2004
I love this poem. Great post.
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