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On Re-seeing ‘Jules et Jim’
On Re-seeing ‘Jules et Jim’ - Robert Seatter
“A poem about how memory can suddenly jolt us out of a sense of contentment with our lives to create a sense of yearning. Only this case, the trigger was on reseeing the 1960s François Truffaut film 'Jules et Jim', about a complicated but enduring love.”
On Re-seeing ‘Jules et Jim’
In middle-age, unreal middle age –
years like snow, the soft and silent stealth
of their covering – I wake without love,
sheets adrift, lines of clear white light
through the blind. Wake too with a sense
of having learnt content, a here-and-now content,
a ceasing of the raging – oranges balanced
against the blue of the table top, spherical,
poised, knowing their weight. Then outside,
a tree taps light branches on the window,
fingers on a memory drum, and those moments
burn back untouchable behind glass, make
a gesture of sound, a something untranslatable.
These are the days when an old film forces tears,
absolutes steadfast against passing trains, clouds, a river,
all those black and white faces waiting for colour.
from Travelling to the Fish Orchards (Seren, 2002) © Robert Seatter 2002, used by permission of the author and publisher.