They were charming, the old ladies
on the boardinghouse verandah
the time my father threw me out...
‘Yes yes you must, O do go to university,
It was the most fun I ever had...sliding
down bannisters, ankle-length
skirts flying...bumping on silver
teatrays down the stairs...’
‘...and the professor wouldn’t call us
Ladies because, he said, if you’re in
my laboratory you’re not...’
‘...and my fiancé killed in the Great
War...’ and ‘there’s only one war, the one
you’re born in, the one you live through...’
and shyly I offer up Great-Uncle Frank
shell-shocked and deaf from the Somme
but knots in my head rang clamorous
night sirens steamy railway stations and those
bald fascisti skulls like Michelangelo
domes all over Rome
and the gas mask in the toybox and jungle
boots on the back porch and my father
limping down the hall
Do you only ever fight one World
War is it the same does ordinary old
war go on unstoppably
I finger her kindly sub-text
how before and after resistances
the wise ones will prompt you
into what to hold onto
October, 2011