Category Archives for 2014

Fired

It is then. One of them sits at the back of class
and learns how to format a spreadsheet or two.
A teenager apprentice, he grins on demand,
and knows how to screen his idleness whenever
I come near.  And here is the other, standing
to attention at the local Cenotaph, his proud
cadet clothes reminding all of loyalty,
safety, courage. He faints – the heat of ceremony,
the pressure of remembrance – and is led away.

It is now. His friend and he are gone.  Too old
to be at home, they’re in their private world.
We’re out too. A friend is 50, an age they think
they’ll never be. The stack they’re playing in becomes
a beacon in the night. Must be a Viking raid, we say.
Holy Island, hide your valuable daughters.
Curiosity fades, and they’re unseen for miles.
Later, still a fearful blaze of sheer
obliterating light, we drive past, home.
The iron roof, trapped in rage, collapses.
Engines, men in uniform, stand helpless
in wonder at the flames. The innocent
darkness holds itself aloof. And as we
take ourselves away to beds and sleep,
their bodies are reducing, starved of
air; of everything they hope; their families’ love.

It is days. They are not missed, then are, then are not found.
And in the only place left for them to be –
fragments of bone, of priceless, matchless DNA.
No real answers but a mystery solved.

It is years. Nothing grows or is harvested there.
No shed or barn stands waiting for another
crop. Only shards of air that pierce the
everyday, that beg the head to turn and look.
No last post for them. Nor proud parents
holding letters of success from Boards or Colleges
for sleepy sons who nothing ever wakes.

~

[background]

Congregational

It is Epiphany – a day of meetings and surprises.
Narrow winter sun pierces lancets,
projecting miracles on whitewash – the walls
just begging for some risen light. The magi moving,

fluid over plaster, bringing gifts to lands
where winter nips unfeeling fingers.
The 4 gas heaters make a brave quartet
But the air is coffin cold, uncaring –

breath clouds, lightens and is quickly gone.
Rejoice. You’re here for what can really bring us
to our knees – the need for death, the hope for life,
the cause of love – and to share a silence that reflects

on wishes, that can condense in actions all our days.
True, Church is more than gravity and graves,
so now we’re older, becomes the everything
we were, gives back the people we’ve become.

But keep away those O.T. resurrected texts
where ministries of learning are grained
like wood into our cells. This stuff goes back
into its own mistakes and never can be changed.

And no amount of transubstantial talk
can match the truth of Christ’s own forsaken cry
up on his cross – “Why have You gone?”
he asks. “Thank God,” it’s tempting to reply,

for it’s that sudden, brilliant lack of faith
that keeps me curious, and here. That pain, torture
and despair that makes a suicide like his a crime
of love to solve as urgent as any on TV.

So souls or cells? How close they sound.
We move eternal into light – science burns
forever, triumphant genome of the stars –
so keep the faith. As Larkin said, it’s going on.

Doctors’ Notes

A surgeon soldier, he surrenders with the rest
at Singapore. An empire, and an army, on its knees
before the bicycle army of Japan, neck stretched
and naked for the sword. In Changi, his baffled

tired men are told they are dishonoured
in defeat. Outside his prison, the kempetai chase
down for slaughter Chinese, Malays, whose tongue,
tattoos or faces pronounce them less than beasts.

A civil army, servants, refugees, they die
with no one there to see their fate. Their bodies
clog the beaches, and the nearby straits, and then
are gone. In gaol, white men whose European codes

and voices mark them down for cocktails in the club,
expect Genevan limits to their captivity.
But evident brutality becomes a fact, and they
are starved, and sicken, or are worked to death.

Confined in their infirmary, and using instruments
saved, made, or found, the doctors do their best
to mend or make men’s pitied bodies whole.
Each case or corpse is given care, and written up

to show the treatment needed to perform
the miracle again, or present the case for murder
at whatever end to war a peace might bring.
The suffering Japan might feel, is quick. No fever-feeble

dysenteric end for it. 2 bombs shake loose
their wrath, and all war’s children die. Demobbed
and suited back to home, he takes his papers and his box
of surgeon’s tools and keeps them till he dies.

Each futile case or life he’d rescued at its edge,
preserved as evidence for good, or cause enough
to gain a gallow’s pledge. The moment never comes.
He never has the chance to speak, and breaks

the grave promise he has kept those years. The notes
are thrown away.  His children keep the case
of tools. And silence comes to make amends.
Each scalpel, saw, and knife their only cenotaph.