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fotocredit@robcullen2024

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.

credit unidentified photographer

…

A week later I was stood on the Larry cart

of that massive steel hulk of coke oven A

waiting watching the deck as the smoke

gasses fumes rose from the rows of oven lids

men dim ghosts carrying lances wearing hoods

walked through the blue green tinged haze

walked the cobbled top in wooden clogs

but it was the running men drew my attention

not the screams, not the smell of his searing skin.

@Rob Cullen 1976.

credit unknown photographer.

….

In 1973 I left Cardiff Art School and worked across the road in British Steels East Moors Steelworks raising money to travel to the USA. I worked in Quality Control which meant I moved around the steel plant, engaged in sampling various products mostly on the coal and coking side. I witnessed at first hand the brutality of heavy industry as experienced by the workers & what I witnessed in 1973 and again in 1974 for a short period has informed my writing and politics ever since. This poem is about helping a sixteen year old illiterate boy, a school leaver to get a job, to help him fill in an application form. The poem is about witnessing, a week later this boys involvement in a seriousn industrial accident in which he was badly burnt. I still think of him.

@robcullen220324.

Lament for the Girl of the Morning Sea.

…

A premonition of merciful peace has emerged

In the morning of this day.

And as if in agreement

Your hand opens to the waves.

In a movement of gratitude,

A moment of quiet acceptance.

I have heard you sing

To the waves crests,

Rise, rise from your depths

Rid me of all pain

I am alone wash over me.

…

In this bright early hour

You are at once transformed.

Peace adorns you,

Rests on your face.

I have seen you whisper

To the open sky

Touch me, cleanse me

Rid me of all fear.

I am alone wash over me.

…

Your hair hangs tangled

Stiffly on your eyes,

Green-water droplets

Trickle to your lips.

Your fingers grasp

The water’s edge.

The shoreline pierces you,

Welcomes you, calls to you.

I am alone wash over me.

…

And you lying unseen

A curved silken spine

Broken by spite

The savagery of indifference

And the brutality

Of unmourned death

Move without moving.

Knowing nothing, knowing nothing

In your quiet sadness.

I am alone wash over me.

…

I have heard you sing

To the waves crests’

Rise from your depths

Rise from your submerged stillness.

I have heard you sing

To the open sky,

Touch me, cleanse me,

Rid me of all pain,

Rid me of all fear.

I am alone wash over me.

….

Your mother cries for you in her silence

And mourns for another in her isolation.                        

I am alone wash over me.

©robcullen2016