BirthdaysAuthor(s): Mervyn MorrisSource: Callaloo, Vol. 28, No. 1, Derek Walcott: A Special Issue (Winter, 2005), p. 42Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805522 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 17:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toCallaloo.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 17:33:57 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BIRTHDAYS

by Mervyn Morris

The game is metaphor. "Birthdays : reassuring corners in the long, dark room of time."

"Reminder knots," another voice

proposes. "Birthdays are reminders time is heartless, beauty fades."

There is no string of time

unravelling till the end is cut,

only a dark pool swirling? letters, matches, galliwasps, toothpaste tubes and railway tickets,

myriad markers from our lives in seminal confusion, falsified

by cuckoo-clocks and calendars.

I, celebrating birthdays in the whirlpool, dream:

something will grow in time.

Callaloo 28.1 (2005) 42

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 17:33:57 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions