Hope Springs ~ Gifts Renounced
for my parents
Underneath
That lamplight
Over there
Over there
By the ~
By the ~
By the ~
As early
As infanthood
You told me and I said no
Sitting at that table
Wooden table
Wooden child
Pinocchio in shorts and shirt
(oh no no no no blouse)
Old women
Maybe thirty
Maybe thirty five
The Sullivan woman
Mrs Cormack
Auntie Nameless
Rhoda
Lavender?
Was it lavender?
Camphor more like
And
Tuberculosis
That wooden table
The top scoured
Cracked from water soaking
Scrubbed until the skin wore off
Like
Sandsoap in an orphanage
Bleeding from love
Too much nun-shaped love
That table-top my life
My skin
Legs
And
Bone
(soft now, there is no night like this one
Not now
Not ever again)
Sleep
When Daddy comes marching home
Daddy will
Daddy will Daddy will
Come marching home
But for now
Propped in a hospital bed
Brain pulp from electrodes of love
Body wrecked from fire in the day
Things that go bang in the ditch
We will remember them
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will
Forget
Somehow
We will forget
The intervening hours
The black hole
The dark night of the soul
Three thirty in the morning
Crouched at the empty window
At Sidi Rezegh
In Torlesse Street
Black
Bloodied
Alone
When Daddy comes
White skirt
Blouse
Broderie Anglaise
Clear as a bell
Clear as day
Cool as dawn mist
Damp as the willow down
Mine
Though you took it away
When your man came home
It was grey shorts
Grey shirt
And that alien name
Worn
Like
A
Cross
Of
Iron
On a ribbon of fire
Won on the battlefield of birth
But not right
Not my birthright
His
Who did not
Has never
Been
Never been
Enough to leave
Just
Was
(grey)
So I sat
Wrong suited
And watched the cards fall
Heard the cups chink
Sensed the leaves drift and collide
Making maps of continents
Angels
Coffins
That which could
Could not
Be
Spoken
It was mine she said
It was mine
That gift
I had been chosen
But
Who by?
My Daddy wasn’t home
was
In that bed
White
Starched like a whimple
Shaved like a peach
Staring at the book
Saint
(yellow)
So far north
Where water boiled in the ground
Grounds were manicured
For Christ
And
The North Canterbury Hospital Board
Steam rose inexplicably
Thermal
Rose to explode
Like the geyser in that room
That room of pain and sanitised Christian faith
So who then
Who gave this gift
This
Gift
I did not want
Like tobacco
Horse racing
The kids next door
(all kids in fact)
I did not want this gift of second sight
Still
I sat while the old ones
(forty or forty-five)
Jabbered
Of tea leaves and insight
Knowledge and wisdom
And
Said to myself
Not for me
Not for me this gift of faith
This
Otherness
You have stripped off my skin
(hidden me)
You
Clothed me in lies
(dappled a moment, a moment then drifting)
You have taken my guts
Spilled
In that ditch
Of the dead
At
El Alamein
I deny you
My litany
Silence
My mask is this man child
Your gift is renounced
Your gift
Your
Chastisement
Forever my shadow
Such
Quiet
Such quiet
Awaiting
Its
Birth
Resurrection
The life ever after
I can hear breathing
In the silence of hope
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
dykiegirl 