Ruth Fainlight was born in New York and has lived mostly in England since she was 15.
A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature she has produced many books, not only of poetry but of translations and short stories, as well as drama and opera libretti. She was married for more than 50 years to the late Alan Sillitoe.
Below is a sample, with a transatlantic setting, from her New and Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, £20).
THE WEDDING CHAPEL
My Nashville apartment
was near the campus and
opposite the Wedding Chapel.
If only I’d made friends
with someone local
I might have been invited
to a ceremony –
but I knew no one.
~
Weekend afternoons
I would sit by the window,
watching them enter,
one couple after another.
I could only imagine
exactly what happened
in the chapel, from the look
on their faces, afterwards.
~
Sometimes music
from inside would reach me –
interesting, what they chose
(maybe old songs from
the Bluebird Café) – notes
which blew across the road
like the gold and silver stars
and moons of the confetti.
~
It made me feel older, lonely –
but lucky – because I knew
that even though I stayed
the whole semester in Nashville,
when I got back home,
my husband would look at me
as wonderingly as if
we still were bride and groom.
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