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As the warm summer evenings invite plans for garden get-togethers and barbecues, we have been reflecting on the importance of friends and family and of those closest to us. We love the poem The Table by Turkish Edip Cansever, which uses the image of a table as a metaphor for a life richly lived. On his table, are placed memories and metaphors, the real and the abstract. It’s a poem that means a great deal to to us at the Poetry Pharmacy and we prescribe it often.
It brings to mind the central role the table plays in our lives – not just as a metaphor, but as the very heart of the home. It's where we gather with family and friends, where love is shared, and where the deepest, most difficult conversations often unfold. Around it, we experience tension and tenderness, nurture and nostalgia. There may be memories of our children from when they were small, the marks of old spills, the cups of tea shared with friends we no longer see but still hold dear.
The closing lines – the table wobbling once or twice, but ultimately bearing the load – speak to us especially now. The news out there in the world can be profoundly unsettling, and it’s easy to feel hopeless. But this poem can remind us of our extraordinary capacity for strength and resilience and growth.
This week, we want to celebrate that idea of home, of coming together, and of the quiet strength found in the ordinary. We hold gratitude for the food on our table, conscious that so many in the world live without such certainty. Let’s pause to acknowledge what we have, and as Derek Walcott writes in Love After Love, let us “sit. Feast on your life.”
You can read a few lines of the poem below or read the full poem here.
''A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in from the window.
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and the weather he put there.''
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