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Poems and other WorksD. W. Winnicott & Masud KhanPublished online: 14 Feb 2012.

To cite this article: D. W. Winnicott & Masud Khan (2008) Poems and other Works, PsychoanalyticPerspectives, 5:2, 91-97, DOI: 10.1080/1551806X.2008.10473028

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Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 5(2):9 1-98

POEMS AND OTHER WORKS

D. K Winnicott and Masud Khan

A Child’s Letter to a Mother Young Donald Winnicott wrote this letter to his mother when he was away at the Leys School in Cambridge in 191 1 and it shows his need, even in his early years, to enliven his depressed mother through play. Maybe Clare Winnicott knew what a burden it really was for him to be in that role, for we can see in this letter what a task he had as a child.

My dearest Mother,

On September 2nd all true Scouts think of their mothers, since that was the birthday of Baden Powell’s mother when she was alive. And so when you get this letter I shall be thinking of you in particular, and I only hope you will get it in the morning.

But to please me very much I must trouble you to do me a little favour. Before turning the page I want you to go up to my bedroom and in the right-hand cupboard find a small parcel . . . Now, have you opened it? Well, I hope you will like it. You can change it at Pophams if you don’t. Only if you do so, you must ask to see No. 1 who knows about it.

I have had a ripping holiday, and I cannot thank you enough for all you have done and for your donation to the Scouts.

My home is a beautiful home and I only wish I could live up to it. How- ever I will do my best and work hard and that’s all I can do at present.

Give my love to the others; thank Dad for his game of billiards and V and K for being so nice and silly so as to make me laugh. But, it being Mother’s Day, most love goes to you.

From your loving boy,

Donald (Winnicott, C., 1989, p. 9)

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Poems and Other Works 93

Three Poems The Tree was written by Donald Winnicott at age 67 and is said to be about Winnicott’s mother.

When Winnicott wrote this poem in 1963 he sent it to his good friend James Britton, Clare Winnicott’s brother, and enclosed this note: “Do you mind seeing this that hurt coming out of me? I think it had some thorns sticking out somehow. It’s not happened to me before & I hope it doesn’t again” (Phillips, 1988, p. 29). Phillips implies that an identification of Christ on the cross refers to the absence of the way the mother “holds” the child in her mind as well as her arms. It also seems to refer to the way children attempt to deal with the mother’s depressed or withdrawn mood. The poem also suggests that the form of deprivation, where the child is compelled to attempt to enliven an inaccessible mother, is at the cost of the child’s spon- taneous vitality

The tree of the title may refer to a special tree in the Winnicott family garden, where Winnicott nestled to do his homework before being sent off to boarding school. From this vantage point, we could speculate that is a tree connected to maternal separation (Winnicott, 2003):

The Tree

D. H? Winnicott

Someone touched the hem of my garment Someone, someone, someone

I had much virtue to give I was the source of virtue

the grape of the vine of the wine

I could have loved a woman

There was not time for loving I must be about my father’s business There were publicans and sinners The poor we had always with us There were those sick with the palsy

and the blind and the maimed and widows bereft and grieving women wailing for their children

Mary, Mary, Mary

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94 D. W. Winnicott and Masud Khan

fathers with prodigal sons prostitutes drawing their own water

from deep wells in the hot sun

Mother below is weeping weeping weeping

Thus I knew her

Once, stretched out on her lap as now on a dead tree

I learned to make her smile to stem her tears to undo her guilt to cure her inward death

To enliven her was my living

So she became wife, mother, home The carpenter enjoyed his craft Children came and loved and were loved Suffer little children to come unto me

Now mother is weeping She must weep

The sins of the whole world weigh less than this woman’s heaviness

0 Glastonbury

Must I bring even these thorns to flower? Even this dead tree to leaf?

How, in agony Held by dead wood that has no need of me

by the cruelty of the nail’s hatred of gravity’s inexorable and heartless pull

I thirst

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Poems and Other Works 95

No garment now No hem to be touched It is I who need virtue Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

It is I who die I who die I die I

(pp. 289-291)

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96 D. W. Winnicott and Masud Khan

Masud Kahn was Winnicott’s student, analysand and editor. Below is a poem Khan wrote in 1963 about his own mother - the fourth wife of his father, who married her at age 76. She was a courtesan who already had an illegitimate child, and was allegedly in her teens when they married. She was perceived by Khan as “a simple woman prone to ‘anxious chatter’ who could not keep up with him” (Hopkins, 2006, p. 8). When he was seven years old, his mother went to visit her family in a village several hundred miles away, promising to return in 30 days. When a telegram arrived on the twenty-ninth day, announc- ing that she would be delayed, Masud’s father raged and swore vengeance, terrorizing the entire household. When Masud’s mother finally returned, Masud refused to drive to the railway station to meet her. When she arrived at the house, he refused to greet her. “You have dishonoured my father and let me down,” he told her (Hopkins, 2006, p. 7). She slapped his face, for the first time ever, and he said that he never spoke to her again.

I Cannot Hear

Masud Khan

I cannot hear I cannot hear you, mother. Not your wailing or chantings, or the whispering of maids around you. The dead leaves are crumpled and stuffed in my ears. I heard the shriek, knew it was you, killed it, mother. My mad inconsolable mother. I killed your voice insisting in my ears.

I cannot hear. What I touch and see is mine, mother, and I cannot share. I cannot hear. Mother. Mother. Mother. (Khan, 2005, p. 7)

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Poems and Other Works 97

At the end of his life, Winnicott wrote this poem. Can it be about mortality? Or about the dream world, and the unconscious? Does it speak to the innerlouter world of intermediate space? Or about tapping into a source of endless creativity?

Sleep

D. W Winnicott

Let down your tap root to the centre of your soul

Suck up the sap from the infinite source

of your unconscious And

Be evergreen. (Winnicott, C., 1989, p. 17)

REFERENCES Hopkins, L. (2006). False SeF The Life of Masud Khan. New York: Other Press. Khan, M. (2005). I Cannot Hear. In R. Willoughby, Masud Khan: The Myth and the

Reality (p. 7). London: Free Association Books. (Original work published 1963) Phillips, A. (1988). Winnicott. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. Winnicott, C. (1989). DWW: A Reflection. In C. Winnicott, R. Shephard, &

M. Davis (Eds.), Psycho-Analytic Explorations (pp. 1-1 8). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Winnicott, D.W. (2003). The Tree. In R.F. Rodman, Winnicott: Life and Work (pp. 289-291). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. (Original work written 1963)

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