The mind of Madame Schmidt

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
—T.S. Elliot

Yes, let me say it then: ‘I am ready to love’,
so let us roll our trousers and enjoy the rain
as might we well
dance, dance, and dance,
and not be lost,
remember the Nelken, spring and all,
on this degenerative end, as my tongue rolls and sings
every word does matter, you know

Whole worlds calcify in a moment, as I sit with you
a freshly cut blade of grass still points
the way to the sun, before it falls,
limp like old school boys at half-mast.

‘How wonderful really that you are listening
to me, a typist, type and recite my life’,
as it all goes dark before the moon has
begun to surrender its shadow

‘Yes, I am ready for love now, I believe’,
more than when I was a little child caught
up in dream of how the hungry lion
throws itself onto the antelope —the feeling
of seeing a Rousseau painting for the first time
before knowing it is a painting is one I’ll never forget

‘Please do not forget me though’, I will
always know that I did it My Way in any case,
it is a strange, demented disease now that you say

‘Memory, yes, memory, a form of writing
one could say, or dancing,
it feels like I remember it all, those
magic moments, as Mr Como would say to me
I had such rosy cheeks, you know’,
being there, really being there, in the city
amidst the midst of hopeful immigrants
‘I was also one, you know’.

‘Ah but the novels, I’ll always have those
but now I can’t see, I can’t see my memories,
Don’t you know how that feels?’
Music is no longer just music when you’re old, it is a dream.

‘Yes, it is time for me now, what a wonderful world’,
‘Just tell my daughter I think I love her…
Who are you anyway?’

The Mind of Madamde Schmidt (in ward five) was short-listed for the 2026 Oxford University Poetry Society Dart Prize