Come Home to Mother

WORDS Anna Couani

23 x 30.2 cm, Hand coloured etching, framed, $150

Shadow mother
Demeter

come home to mama
come home, mother

it’s raining in my heart
where I walk alone

Persephoni
Proserpina

come home to Heera
come home, Dimitra

the brick wall turns everything
to stone

remove the picture from the wall
forget mother
forget Persephone

look for immortality
out in the wild blue yonder
now golden as in dreams

leave us all behind
not captured but abandoned

left long ago
where the fields were
being decimated

Artist statement

Come Home to Mama is the title of a 2012 Martha Wainwright album that includes the song called Proserpina.

My etching is from a photograph of my own shadow on the brick wall of the viaduct in a park on Glebe Point.

My friend Antigone Kefala lived just up the hill from there in Annandale and had been very close to her mother.

My poem is dedicated to Antigone, referencing the mother thing. Antigone owned the print until her passing in 2022.