The 'Mine' That is 'Mine' and the 'Mine' That is Yours

Poetry recycling was the focus of a poetry workshop I attended last week before jetting off to Glasgow for the weekend. It is something that I have done before but never knew it was called something. I used to be a member of a creative writing group that met on Monday nights. The original membership listed pages of people but by the time I joined it was down to just three. Numbers were no measure of the enthusiasm of the writers. The group was set up to encourage interaction between the Polish community and the native UKers. Two of the three people were two Polish sisters and I made up the UK side of things. A lack of funding brought the enterprise to an end.

We used to recycle poems. We would take a Polish poem and write our own versions. My pronunciation of Polish poets gave rise to mystified looks. ‘Who?’ followed by ‘Oh, yes – him’ with the correct name, followed by a sprinkling of mirth at how wrong I had got it.

At the workshop there were a selection of poems, short ones. We looked at how the poems sounded, identified pattern and rhyme schemes and such like. The idea of dissecting poems, the way English lessons in school did it, was thoroughly condemned but we did it anyway. We were then told to find a poem and recycle it.

I read very few non-fiction books but years back I read ‘Between Silk and Cyanide’ by Leo Marks. It was all about secret messages and spies. I skipped the cypher parts and just read the story of it all. It was complicated. Not the story, the cyphers. They used poems for key words to decipher the message. The trouble was when the Germans knew the poem that was used they could work out the message. This led to writing original poems that the Germans didn’t know and using them for the key words. Look, I told you it was complicated. Read the book. ‘The Life That I Have’ was one of those poems.

The Life That I Have

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

by Leo Marks

It was a poem I loved long before I discovered my own passion for poetry writing. It wasn’t on the list given us at the workshop, but we were allowed to use our own favourites.

and my recycled version...

the life that I have

and the days that I have

the breath I exhale

is mine

the life that I love

and the seas that I sail

are mine, and mine, and mine.

All ends as it will

As breath becomes still

Not an end, just a pause

There are memories to spill

In the long green grass

Stories once mine become yours

It doesn’t have a title - yet. And it is not a first draft but not a finished version either. It is somewhere between. We talked about how what a poet intends in writing the poem isn’t always what the reader picks up on.

Passing on stories was not my focus as I wrote, as some had thought. It was the word ‘mine’. In the original poem the word ‘yours’ crops up often. The lover and the loved are part of an exchange. The ‘other’ is the motive for everything. The happiness of the ‘other’ matters. Love is about sacrifice, as it should be, but in the giving up of everything for the ‘other’ what happens to ‘mine’? It seems that we are almost not allowed to have anything that is ‘mine’.

I was brought up in a Roman Catholic household. I went through all the rituals and was aware going through them that my faith was shaky. I wasn’t sure what I believed about God, about sin, about Jesus, about church or anything. Despite all the doubts, do you know why I went through first communion? It was the dress. It was the first time I had a dress that was entirely mine, not a hand me down dress. It was mine and I was going to wear it no matter what.

How much of me is ‘mine’? I think about my hair colour – mine used to be a very dark brown. Now it comes courtesy of Superdrug’s own brand of non-permanent ‘Rich Honey Brown’. It’s not mine. The clothes I wear are branded, not mine. I used to knit and sew almost all that I wore. Now it’s off the peg from a clothes shop. My eyes aren’t mine – not the lenses since laser eye surgery. My hearing isn’t mine but comes by way of hearing aids.

Is my time mine? I’m retired so in some ways it is mine, but the use of it comes with expectations. Is my money mine? Some of it. Bills need to be paid. Income tax. Housing benefit. But there are always the pleas from charities. What about my politics or my opinions? Are they mine? I am aware of how much manipulation goes on and how words are measured out to make a point or to persuade me to a view – and I am gullible at times.

‘Mine’ gets tied to ‘selfish’ but it is an unfair binding at times. Marking off something that is ‘mine’ says that my personal wellbeing isn’t always tied into someone else’s, or perhaps that I am in a better place to meet someone else’s need if my own wellbeing is sorted.

My husband and I had days off from each other when we were on holiday. We had spent the greater times of our days apart, him at the office and me at school teaching unruly pupils. We didn’t always spend evenings together. To suddenly be together for twenty-four hours each day, it was inevitable that there would be a falling out. To get round this we took a day off from each other to do our own thing. I like walking, He likes museums. We each had areas of interest that were our ‘mine’. Over the years I have come to embrace some of his ‘mine’, and he has stepped into some of my ‘mine’.

What is 'mine' is held loosley in the palm. Sometimes it needs to be surrendered to make way for 'yours'. What is 'mine' is not carved in stone or written in permanent marker pen. It is not 'yours' to take but 'mine' to give away. Sometimes what is 'mine' is held too tightly in the hand and becomes twisted.

I cannot keep the 'mine' I'm supposed to give away.

I cannot give away the 'mine' I am supposed to keep

There is an inescapable truth that comes ot mind, however. As a Christian engaged in a daily walk with God, everything that is 'mine' has been handed over to God. Nothing is really 'mine' at all. And everything that is God's has been handed over to me. I don't have anything that is 'mine' but I have access to everything that is His.