KARL THEOBALD responds as TED

And what i needed, that never seemed to come.
However much I prodded at the opaque indifference
Of this mechanical pagent. This fury of promise.
That never seemed to come. However much I teased and
bullied and pleaded with this remote page. This empty mirror.
What I needed. I, who must now become Judas to the bond.
I who could conjure a molten fox and knew the shapes that ovid keeps.
I could not make it come. Not even through ancient beats of the chested drum.
What i needed. What I thought was rightly mine as servant of the muse.
Must have passed me by. Or maybe I was used.
What I needed but never rightly had.
That I could not pull from the memory of the lad.
What i needed to help you live.
Was love my love. I never had love to give.

Poem to Ted, From Sylvia, by Jessica Hynes

Under your microscope, what had you hoped to find?

Dividing and dividing until you had it.

Slicing and slicing until my heart was offal.

A boy collecting eggs,

To study the bulbous eyed chick

Unhatched. A sickly, grey, old mans pallor

And tufts of white feather

Never turned yellow.

How cool you always were,

Your gaze resting on the left side of my forehead,

Your imagination

You were trying too see in.

As if what was contained there

Would yield an answer to

Your inquisition.

It was not this that i needed,

Only your love. Only your love.

The notion that the 'small' human experience is diminutive not only in scale but also in value.

I'm interested in this idea and how it relates specifically to the female experience being historically overlooked - where is the IMPORT or SIGNIFICANCE in small mundane domestic chores being repeated over and over again? In ancient communities those that distinguished themselves from the group or challenged the structure of it were seen as something of a threat. Our survival as a race depended on our abilities to submit to the group, to belong to the tasks that occupied our every waking moment. If we had challenged their importance or pondered their validity we would have become obsolete. Received wisdoms and domestic duty are the basis of our humanity, whether it is creating a brush broom from twigs the same way our great great great granny did it, or teaching your child how to share, these small 'female' tasks related to children and home are rendered historically insignificant by their ubiquity.
   People who fill our history books are those who deliberately sought to distinguish themselves from their society. People who, like Hitler, sought fame, power and control as an end in itself, people who did not surrender themselves to their ultimate insignificance and dedicate their days to the minutiae tasks that ARE our civilisation, rather showboat their empty pointless ideas for a 'better' one. Our beauty and strength as a race is in our communality. The fact that we can love and nurture each other, care for our families and protect our communities. These things are not created by great thinkers or invented by politicians, they happen because  all around the world, every day millions of 'insignificant' women and men make bread, wash clothes and sweep floors, from clay huts in Botswana to high rises in Banbury. These small human lives are not small, they are vast, stretching back in time to the beginning, passing knowledge on to carry their progeny into the future, part of a great and glorious whole (wo)mankind.