Tag: poetry

1^st 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’