Poetry

My April Fools’ Day in Spain was no laughing matter

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes reveals her revelries during a book tour in springtime Madrid

Friday 05 April 2024 15:55 BST
The ornate skylight at Palacio Longoria, the Art Nouveau headquarters of Madrid's Society of Authors and Editors
The ornate skylight at Palacio Longoria, the Art Nouveau headquarters of Madrid's Society of Authors and Editors (Frieda Hughes)

The sense that my inner organs were swilling in my boots

As my age lurched forward another year overnight, was an illusion.

It was April the First but no joke, although I could hear Paul McCartney

Singing “When I’m 64” inside my head, even as I woke.

I remembered the blue rinse perms and floral household pinafores

Of the 60-year-olds in my childhood as I reached for my ankle-boot heels,

Black leather coat and boarding pass for Madrid. The book launch of George

Was going to list him with Ukraine, China, Turkey, America and now Spain.

Age, and the interviews, from the moment I landed

To the minute of my leaving, separated me from hen parties

Of younger women with their matching slogan shirts, extended eyelashes,

Glossy lips and fishnet skirts. The procession of journalists

Asked no two questions the same as I re-examined George again

In the bookshop; “Poppies in October”. Across the road

Of flowering purple trees stood the centre for musical copyright,

Its window edges and doorways curling towards the heavens

Around the splintered rainbow of a central glass skylight.

It is beneath the memory of this I hear

The carbon monoxide alarm that I tore from the wall

Beeping forlornly at the end of the hall.

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