Poem
Gwyneth Lewis
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“Knitting’s like everything,” it’s tempting to say.No. Knitting’s like knitting. Sure, there’s cosmology
in Norwegian sweaters with vertical stars,
but as science that doesn’t get us far.
If space is made of superstrings
then God’s a knitter and everything
is craft. Perhaps we can darn
tears in the space-time continuum
and travel down wormholes to begin
to purl in another dimension’s skein.
But no. There are things you can’t knit:
a spaceship. A husband, though the wish
might be strong and the softest thread
would be perfect for the hair on his head,
another, tougher, that washes well
for his pecs and abdominals. You can stitch a soul
daily and unpick mistakes,
perform some moral nip and tucks —
forgiveness. Look out. Your Frankenstein
might turn and start knitting you again.
© 2007, the BBC
From: How to Knit a Poem
Publisher: BBC Radio 4, London
Commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
From: How to Knit a Poem
Publisher: BBC Radio 4, London
Gwyneth Lewis
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1959)
Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's inaugural National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She wrote the six-foot-high words on the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, rumoured to be the largest poem in the world.
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Poems of Gwyneth Lewis
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PHILOSOPHY
“Knitting’s like everything,” it’s tempting to say.No. Knitting’s like knitting. Sure, there’s cosmology
in Norwegian sweaters with vertical stars,
but as science that doesn’t get us far.
If space is made of superstrings
then God’s a knitter and everything
is craft. Perhaps we can darn
tears in the space-time continuum
and travel down wormholes to begin
to purl in another dimension’s skein.
But no. There are things you can’t knit:
a spaceship. A husband, though the wish
might be strong and the softest thread
would be perfect for the hair on his head,
another, tougher, that washes well
for his pecs and abdominals. You can stitch a soul
daily and unpick mistakes,
perform some moral nip and tucks —
forgiveness. Look out. Your Frankenstein
might turn and start knitting you again.
From: How to Knit a Poem
Commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
PHILOSOPHY
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