Some cars are over machined, some poems overcooked, simplicity overlooked…
Living in complicated times.
It was in this place, those days, those years
When rivers ran black as night in days
A night sky lit red by coke ovens doors
And green fields drowned in the spoil
It was in this place hunger and poverty
Stamped, slammed feet on the ground.
Children starved, slept empty mouthed
Soup kitchens feed families the hungry
This place where malnutrition and disease
Looked in at every door every open window
And men marched to great cities to plead
To beg for assistance in a time of great need.
Men marched the length, breadth of the land
But were met by the cold eyes of indifference
She told the stories of those days those years
And when it was her time to pack and leave
She was small, just fourteen years of age
She was a small child travelling as a stranger
In those long days of the great depression
Think of a child travelling from a valley
To live in a great bankers Chelsea mansion
She spoke of survival, the cruel vicious lips
The vindictive unsmiling eyed housekeeper
Just because she didn’t speak a word of Welsh.
She worked as a maid for a florin a few pennies
To send back home to her family in the valley
To support her parents, her brothers, her sisters
And she was like so many valley children
It’s that indifference to others suffering
That gives the lie to excuses of ignorance.
When the cruelty became too much to bare
She left to work in a Rabbi’s home
As a young nanny to the children
She recalled the words of kindness
The different foods and the music
Sophie Tucker’s My Yiddishe Mama
We would laugh when she danced
A mischievous smile, those dark brown eyes
The slow easy dance movements
Memories of happy days remembered.
And she would recount listening
To the stories of families from Germany
Who’d escaped and told their stories
Of the treachery, the butchery of Crystal Nacht
Of the barbarity and disappearances
And the wearing of yellow star badges
Our country pretended it knew nothing
When people were fleeing for their lives
It’s that indifference to others suffering
That gives the lie to excuses of ignorance.
And so the war came as it was bound to
And my mother packed her belongings
Her furniture into an old Pickford’s van
To make her way back to the valley
To bring up her child while her man
Was recalled to serve, to do his soldiers duty
Over five long years fighting in others lands.
She stood with a red cross box on the square
And at night worked in the arsenal soldering
The fuses on bombs while the blitz flames
Lit the skies over Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea
One day she was called her man was returning
The village decked out with ribbons and bunting
But he was not the man he was before the war
His temper a short fuse and his hands heavy
And so he found himself again in the silence
The solace of growing in a high walled garden
He never spoke of the war, never those medals
They were kept in the black box under his bed
Along with everything else that came before.
White Sheets
Each sheet rises in sequence to reveal the pathway.
To reveal you. Standing there.
You. Watching me.
In silence.
And the sheets hide you again as they fall
to hang without movement.
And then begin to unfurl and rise
as yet another gust pushes the white cotton out
and you are once again exposed.
You are standing watching me with that serious look.
Your eyes expressionless.
Studying me. And once more the whiteness
falls to cover where you are standing.
There is no movement now.
Just the brilliant whiteness falling on you like a curtain.
(Excerpt form the long poem “White Sheets”)
RAC.
