Sallow Yellow

I love colour imagery. My poem below was influenced by a wonderful novel – The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White, set before World War I. Theodora Goodman was the daughter of a would-be farmer who took his family to Australia under the government Assisted Passage scheme.

While the men succeeded by turning their hands to ranch farming, their women and daughters continued to live an Edwardian English drawing room existence, embroidering, playing the piano, surrounded by china ornaments, in the bush! They didn’t venture out in case they lost their English rose complexions.

Theodora rebelled against this. By the age of ten she was riding bareback with her father and was a crack shot with a rifle. She was an embarrassment to her mother.

In middle life though she was alone, a solitary figure travelling between European cities, living in modest hotels. Though she was dark-haired and wore only black before her fifties, her colour was yellow. I was moved by her story and wrote a poem about her.

‘Once there was the new dress she put on for mother’s sake... "Well, well, all dressed up… but I don’t think we’ll let you wear yellow again. It doesn’t suit… it turns you sallow," Mother said. So that the mirrors began to throw up the sallow Theodora Goodman, which meant who was too yellow.’   The Aunt’s Story p. 27.

Theodora
From a picture rail
above rose-papered walls
hangs spinsterhood,
her oldest garment,
replacing childhood’s yellow sash.
In sallow skin and soft moustache
Theodora wears her sadness.

Childhood beneath
a blistering sun
has withered her countenance.
Bitterness yellows her voice
calling for hands which do not demand
that skin should be blooming or pale or unblemished.
The touch of a stranger is often the kindest.

Thank you for reading this. Dorothy Nelson