Absence

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.