Blackbird Fly

February 15th, 2010

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Most haute couture fashion is beyond the finances of ordinary mortals but it doesn’t hurt to look and marvel and admire. My mother and I used to play a game where we’d look through various fashion magazines and choose the dress we liked the best. This quest was punctuated with ‘oo, I don’t like that,’ and ‘Oh, now that’s elegant,’ or ‘what a get up.’ We made different choices, as one would expect, but it was through this particularly female pursuit – teapot and biscuits handy at all times – that I became familiar with the names of designers in the fashion world.

I followed the careers and collections of a few, as you would a particularly interesting artist or author, but only through photographs I must mournfully add. And the death this week of one whose designs often intrigued – Alexander McQueen – really saddens me. In my imaginary salon I would have bought many of his clothes, particularly his bird dresses. Suicide leaves a feeling of despair in its wake and perhaps more so when such a bruised and beautiful creative soul gives up and leaves this world.

The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.

For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, “The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?”

I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.

Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.

Anna Akhmatova

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