On Poems for Birthdays

Occasional poetry is some of my favourite, not only because I have terribly bourgeois tastes, but because it's poetry that's meant to be shared with friends. So many poems are for private reflection, it's nice to have poems that are unapologetically social.

But when it comes to finding poems for birthdays, one has to be resourceful. Many of the best poems have such gloomy takes on getting older. This genre could occupy an entire post, but it's late and I'm going to leave you with only a few short favourites of a happier variety.

Jonathan Swift's wit is legendary. So, it's no surprise to find a birthday poem by him that sparkles with wit. Beginning in 1719 he wrote a birthday poems for "Stella," his mistress. In 1727 he wrote to an older Stella that birthdays were not occasions to

[...] think on our approaching ills
And talk of spectacles and pills.
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.

I think those lines still sound fresh. I can't imagine what were in pills in 1727, but apparently the daily chore of taking medication has not changed. But Swift is right. Birthdays are about celebrating. That's why I like this gem by Christina Rosetti. Thanks to the arrival of her loved one, it sounds like her birthday is going to be a real smash:

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Birthdays are also about giving thanks. That's why I love this poem by American poet Philip Appleman. Entitled "Birthday Card to My Mother," it pretty much makes every birthday card I've ever written sound like crap. But that's the great thing about poetry: it expresses all the things we can't put words to ourselves. I bet his mom was touched to read this last stanza:

You have survived it all,
come through wreckage and triumph hard
at the center but spreading
gentleness around you--nowhere
by your bright hearth has the dust
of bitterness lain unswept;
today, thinking back, thinking ahead
to other birthdays, I
lean upon your courage
and sign this card, as always,
with love.

So should you find yourself celebrating a birthday soon, forget about your ills, get yourself a silk tablecloth, and imagine getting a card from Philip Appleman. You deserve it!