Day: April 3, 2016

 

Listening to Rachmaninov’s Vespers at Christmas

brought you back into my thoughts from those days

when you were fifteen and expecting your first child.

 

And you were too frightened to fall asleep

so I sat up with you and whiled away the night hours,

playing cards and telling you those old stories.

 

Night after night from December through to March

of what it was like to grow up in the village as a child

and as we talked  the boys would slide into your room

 

Instead of prowling the streets and alleys like wolves

blowing their heads off with petrol, gas and glue

and they listened too and laughed as I told you

 

Of places I’d been to and those Manhattans night views,

of exploring the walkways and hidden stairs and floors

explorations of Grand Central Station in the early hours

 

Of that quiet time before dawn when the night crew

sat around yawning or folded asleep at their desks.

The crazy stories of the village and old Digger Young

 

and his fight to get away from the awakening dead

And the boys soon fell asleep on the floor but you

sat up wanting more of those childhood stories .

 

More of the kind that made you laugh you said.

And you told me your stories too, of North Wales

and the homes and what you had been through.

 

And you cried now and then. And asked do you

believe me? Do you believe what I’ve said they did?

And I told you I did. I believed you. You cried again.

 

And then you said quietly I think I can sleep now.

And then one night you looked at me and said

I must be bad for those men to treat me like that

 

In the way that they did. And you asked me

“Do you think I’m bad? I mean really bad?”

Is there a sign on my head that says about me

 

Anyone can do whatever they want with me.

I told you that there are bad men and yes

they do bad things and they did that to you.

 

But what they did didn’t make you bad at all

it says more about them than it says about you.

And then you told your story over and over again

 

to the social workers, their managers and the police.

And they decided you and the rest were just lying

and through the nights that followed I listened

 

to your anger and the pain of feeling betrayed again

and again and again and again and again and again.

Years later you wrote a letter saying you remembered.