The Black Box.
It’s been the first night
I’ve slept right through
In a month or more
I woke thinking
Of you and that black box
You used to keep
under your bed
and those messages
from the past it contained.
A few words written
On brown parcel paper
With the correct postage
Sent from Germany
In nineteen forty five
You wrote to your love
Breaking out tonight
Heading for American lines
But you ended up
With the Russians instead
And we laughed at that
So typical of our dad.
But there was that faded
Old telegram too
So fragile now
From where you’d
Handled it so often
Telling you your brother
Had died that morning.
He’d fought in the war
Just like you
And came home
To the austerity
Of a land on its knees
Not free from desease
And the virulency of TB
That defied the hope
Of that miracle
Drug penicillin.
People have forgotten
The fear contagion
Of disease could bring
My poor uncle
Visited his old home
And his family
In Ireland for that last time
Not knowing
That he carried
A death sentence
And passed the disease
to his younger brother
And to his own daughter
Then when it came
To having tests in school
Before inoculation
It was found that
I was immune
And I must have been
exposed to it too.
But luck showed its hand
And stood on my
Right shoulder.
As children we’d run
around the street
singing that old jingle
Who won the war
in nineteen forty four.
And my father
Would say quietly
You shouldn’t believe
In such lies
And that constant
Bragging of the greatness
Of the British Empire.
We fought in a war
But paid for it dearly
War is never something
To be bragged over.
Rob Cullen 18/05 2016.
