Present absent lost.
…
He was here there
but parts were absent
lost on an Italian beach
amid 90 per cent casualties
…
Locked in a camp
with one water faucet
and 7000 thirsty starving men
waiting for red cross parcels.
…
He never wore
his campaign medals
or marched
up and down.
Saluting cenotaphs
as old soldiers do
at the parades
each year in town.
….
We lived
with photographs
sealed in a black box
locked under his bed
…
Photographs taken
of pre-war days
Serpentine deck chairs
of Regents park
Hyde Park
Speakers Corner
on Sundays
and those friends.
…
His memories
all gone
now then
and now he’s gone too.
…
Lost in translation
the silence
of survivors
shame and guilt.
…
And the inability
to talk
to describe
to anyone
Who’s never been
there, out there,
who can understand
without telling.
…
Without explaining
the emotion
the fear
and the elation.
…
Then the shame
and we his children
deal with
his silence.
sudden tempers
avoidance
of conflict and
alone in his garden.
…
Clinging
to silence
absence
disconnection.
…
Of being there
but not here
except to share a past
that came before.
…
He returned
but he was not
the same man
they said.
…
I knew only
this man
that man
not the one before.
…
Sometimes it was like
dancing with a ghost,
the unsaid words
the brief glimpses.
…
Remembering Anzio & the ones who went before.
Part of the long poem “Absence” previously published in Rob Cullen’s Poetry & Photography Collection – Uncertain Times. 2016 & republished 2023.
