Ruth Fainlight

Ruth Fainlight Poems

Ruth Fainlight Biography

Ruth Fainlight (born 2 May 1931, New York City, U.S.) is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist. Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton Colleges of Arts and Crafts. In addition to her own works, Fainlight has also provided criticism for BBC Radio, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and numerous other publications. She was married to the British writer Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) and has a son, David, who is a photographer for The Guardian and an adopted daughter, Susan. She lives in London. She has twice been Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee and was a close friend of Sylvia Plath in the years leading up to Plath's death.)

The Best Poem Of Ruth Fainlight

Ageing

Since early middle-age
(say around forty)
I've been writing about ageing,
poems in many registers:
fearful, enraged or accepting
as I moved through the decades.

Now that I'm really old
there seems little left to say.
Pointless to bewail
the decline, bodily and mental;
undignified; boring
not to me only but everyone,

and ridiculous to celebrate
the wisdom supposedly gained
simply by staying alive.
- Nevertheless, to have faith
that you'll be adored as an ancient
might make it all worthwhile.

ii
Ageing means smiling at babies
in their pushchairs and strollers
(wondering if I look as crazy
as Virginia or Algernon -
though I don't plan to bite!)
Realising I'm smiling at strangers.

It means no more roller-skating.
That used to be my favourite
sport, after school, every day:
to strap on my skates,
spin one full circle in place,
then swoop down the hill and away.

When I saw that young girl on her blades,
wind in her hair, sun on her face,
like a magazine illustration
from childhood days, racing
her boyfriend along the pavement:
- then I understood ageing.

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