The Age of Singing

On Parenting and those Few Rare Poems

It was my son’s birthday last week and so I have been remembering two surprises of the first weeks of parenthood. The first waited for us in the sitting room of our rented tenement flat. We chose the flat more for its location than its comfort, being situated in Edinburgh’s southside and near my wife’s parents. The chilly stairwell smelled of damp concrete even in the summer, when it had not rained for a week. The flat’s inner hallway had bare wooden floors, the kitchen had a hole that looked down into the foundations of the building, a further cupboard had a hole that led we didn’t know where. It was not, you might say, the picture-postcard abode of new parenthood.

The sitting room, where we would spend most of our life in the flat, was typical of Edinburgh. It was spacious, had high ceilings, and was impossible to heat. And so that first surprise of our new life was a Calor Gas heater, replete with its stubby blue cannister, that we placed in the centre of the sitting room. It had a stubborn ignition button at the top of the brown metal casing; the gas cannister, attached by an orange rubber nozzle, fitted into the open back. Sparked to life, the heating coils tightened as they illuminated. At 1am (2am, 3am, or 4am), our son desperate for his night feed, we would shuffle with exhaustion into the cold sitting room and bask in front of its little cone of warmth. The heater making its little fff-putt, so like the sound that MacDiarmid said was that of a loosed arrow.

And after the feeding was done and the gas glow extinguished, we would discover that second surprise of parenthood. Almost as strange to me as the heater was the sound of my own voice, singing. We would carry our little tender parcel, and sing. It came spontaneously. We did not sing because he cried; we sang when he was calm. The night didn’t compel us, because we sang at all hours.

I am tempted to say that singing to someone else is so different from singing to oneself but, sleep-deprived and exhausted, my impression was that the parent singing in the room in the dark is singing to both the child and to themselves. I say this because of the songs we sang. My wife’s selection was so different to my own. In all the years, I never sang her songs, and, as far as I am aware, she never sang any of mine. My wife sang ‘The Skye Boat Song’ and ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ – her reasons will be her own secret. My song, my staple, was the old ballad by Ewan MacColl, ‘The Shoals of Herring’.

O we fished the Swarth and the Broken Bank
I was cook and I'd a quarter sharing
and I used to sleep standing on my feet
and I'd dream about the shoals of herring.

There were many songs that I sang once, to try them out, but at a conservative estimate I must have sung this song a thousand times. It fitted the moment and all that I was feeling at the time. It spoke to me of dedication, like parenthood, and in it was also something lonely and strenuous, so like those first months. It was a song about a passage into manhood, and I felt that heavy burden that was its own celebration. I sang and – I feel now – I explained myself to my own child. Explained my love as much as my doubts.

O the work was hard and the hours long
And the treatment, sure it took some bearing
There was little kindness and the kicks were many
As we hunted for the shoals of herring.

I think of all of this not only because it was my son’s birthday but at the realisation we have now reached that point where we no longer sing to him. That time, so tender, so intimate, is over. He is eleven, pre-teenage, and much too cool and serious to allow such overt displays of love. We are now reaching the age where love must be housed in much more subtle acts. Now, love’s austere and lonely offices include placing electronic items on charge, not closing the house door until I’ve seen him cross that first road outside our house and letting him walk ahead with his friends.

Now you're up on deck, you're a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellows
While you're searching for the shoals of herring

A friend talks to me of his frustration with contemporary poetry: it never lives up to being re-read. Most poems lose rather than gain when returned to. I am reminded of my song of parenthood that I returned to so many times – and of another conversation, this time in Germany, where a student asked why he kept reading books and being disappointed. He found little in most poems, most collections. My reply was that this was the misery and brilliance of poetry. I do not believe that we should be awed by everything we read. I am suspicious of those who are constantly in love with new books. I think that any reader in poetry is aiming for something different – they are involved in a search for the few books, the few poems perhaps, that will really change their life. Those lines that come to them as a life’s companion. You will know when you find them – and when you do, you hope, find them so rare, so true, you will know yourself marked forever by them.

O I earned my keep and I paid my way
And I earned the gear that I was wearing
Sailed a million miles, caught ten million fishes
We were sailing after shoals of herring.