Twice a year she polished “the old silver.”
This was a ceremony that demanded
towels spread out at one end of the table,
basins of soapy water and clear water,
many soft cloths, the squat jar of polis,
and, lined up for exacting treatment, things
we lived with day by day and never looked at:
the teapot hardy any company
was grand enough to merit, napkin rings
(only two: the children’s were just wood),
the little tray her grandmother had used
for calling cards, which some unthinking piety
kept sitting unemployed in the front hall,
a child’s mug which was, at least, employed
(used to hold toothpicks),—and the family spoons,
brought from the rack that held two rows of ten.
(An upper row of ten, a bottom row
of nine after a genteel kleptomaniac
late of the Altar Guild, had made her move.)
Peering at each critically, she washed
and rinsed and dried it, then swabbed polish on.
It was a pink paste, and I used to think
the smell of it was pink—whatever that meant.
It wasn’t pink for long; a little rubbing
made it the color of February slush
as it took every smudge unto itself.
Household magic! From a final flourish
issued a buffed-to-dazzling retinue,
ready to be set back on shelves, the spoons
hung by their bowls again to dangle proudly
handles crammed with curlicued initials.
Too good to use, they’d hang there good for nothing
but to amaze us six months further on
by how distinctly dingy they’d become,
taking on a gradual dusk of tarnish
by tinges too insidious to be noticed
till it was time to bring them down again.
She fought it back so many years, the stealthy
challenge of shadow, steady-paced corrosion
hovering in the very air we breathed.
How long is it since nineteen ovals winked
in idle brilliance at the plunging sun?
The bright idea I had of writing this
itself turns darker at the thought of time,
wearily searching for the single spon
no pointed hints could ever conjure back
to join its showy fellows on the rack.
And where’s the rack? What niece or nephew has it?
Two or three spoons that ended up with me
lie in some dresser somewhere, out of sight.
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,”
she’d say, every six months, when she was done.
It isn’t worth it, though, to everyone.
Sooner or later everyone gets robbed.
— Robert B. Shaw
