1st August 1949
RMS Largs Bay, departing Southampton docks,
pauses one moment more amidst a million shreds
of sun from steel, sea, and sky, as clamour of farewells
joins cacophony of gulls, metal on stone, scrape of ship,
shout of sailor, horn’s blast drowning into whimpers,
final cries of hope and heartache, while you
remain wordless, sharp features a granite mask,
gripping handrail, knuckles matching fresh ivory paint,
accentuating jet-black hair and stubble; crushed
and jostled between overexcited Ten Pound Poms,
you are one of one thousand seekers,
though you seek yourself more than most,
staring below at upturned faces, then squeezing, contorting
emaciated torso, limbs, you pull back, escaping starboard,
where space and thrill of freedom ignite a yearning to break
into a run as through summer-warm fields of boyhood.
A single sliver of mirror silver,
no memory, but a maddening hint of one.
Golden-haired woman emerges from below decks,
a swaddled baby close to her breast, and you are undone.
Familiar evil crashes over you. Quelling panic, you press
palms and forehead to burnished bulkhead. Surely no one
carries a secret like yours. Yet surely many do. Skull
and fingertips conduct the throbbing of deep, distant
engines – pulsing heart of this all-encompassing ferric
surrogate mother. She bore countless souls to battle,
now she bears countless more, safely wrapped in iron
womb, cherishing secrets beneath her sheet of white,
giving birth after seven weeks, spilling you all out
onto Australia’s south-western shores.
Your name, a meaningless label, your identity
lost by the doctors of your day, guinea pig to their sciences.
A double-edged reaper had scythed away your sanity.
Electroshock and insulin as ravenous bears,
smashing through honeycomb memories,
devouring contents, sweet and sour sucked empty,
licked clean: trauma forgotten, you remembered
nothing.
Who was this furrow-browed man, this weeping woman,
insisting you were their son?
Who was this fragile golden girl wailing bitterly,
You were her husband and father of this baby boy?
Death beckoning,
doctors presenting
their last intervention:
life sentence in a mental asylum
or emigrate
immediately.
History lover and teacher
you will become,
no one questioning
why you never share your own.
Too few will be those to whom you tell
your truth,
too few to shield you from the incessant
inner accusations
of abandonment.
Thus, guilt will gnaw soul,
twist mind to knots,
maul spirit for fifty years,
until, one empty Monday morning,
the phone rings in your hallway and–
your firstborn comes
seeking you.
First published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, July 2023; Issue #13 ‘These Things We Carry’
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