Sunday Night is.... Living Doll

Cliff is pedestrian, but looks rather like Cristiano Ronaldo and he sings about a living doll.

Talking of living dolls, we finally got to see the new grand-daughter, now named, but name under wraps until all family informed. I forgot how small a two-day baby is. She looks (even at original weight 8lb 2oz) almost irresponsibly tiny. You have no business being that small, I want to say. Nobody has. And swaddled, you look very like a doll, except you move: your eyes flick this away and that way without actually seeing very much, your mouth grins and pouts a little, your nose wrinkles and you move your head from side to side. Beneath the swaddling your legs are kicking. You are on the point of crying, then you do cry, maybe only because air is passing through you, or your digestive system is doing something still unfamiliar. So we stroke your cheeks and brows and you slowly quieten and close the blue eyes, which are only blue because all babies' eyes are.

What a piece of work is a baby! How human she is already and how quick to learn! Those brain cells must be multiplying like rabbits!

I am working on something for you, something serious I hope but, because I now have your name and know that your first two given names have fourteen letters precisely, you shall also have an acrostic sonnet, as light and pretty as I can make it like a small cheap home-made jewel that really glitters when you hold it up to the light, and you know it's just a cheap toy, but understand, some time at least, that poetry should be prepared to make such toys out of its love of language and occasion and that this too will be made out of love because you are the occasion.

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More on the end of the poetry course at the art school soon.