Arbeit Macht Frei

This is the arch that set us free.
Those years ago, its open gates
Admitted enemies that would
have brought us to our knees.

Now we are here in thanks for all
their suffering. Such sacrifice of innocence
our own made here for ours. Gave up
their chance of iron at the throat,

Of making an heroic end, to
make the toughest choice of all:
To make the living from the dead.
We knew their minds. And home they came

To us. In sleep they called. They saw
and took those lives. Such brutal ends
were just, but tested men whose hearts
were better brazed by war. And such souls

They were, to even sometimes see beneath,
a common breath and need to live.
Such brave humanity. It’s just: they’re gone:
we come to this their final shrine

For now our continent is clean
We stand here on the monument
Our Fatherland decreed should mark
The paying of that debt to Christ

The final victory of our purer blood
over all those outcast tribes that spelled,
conspired and sought with slavs to bring
us down. So stand in years of peace

That brought, and look about a landscape
That is now filth free. And name them
not, that is the leader’s last decree.
But stand here on the ramp such ends

were wrought with cleansing gas and fire.
See where their ugly history perished
from the earth, and gave to us release –
And think what work it was that made us free.

Angio

for David

We do not know the damage in the heart –
Time leaves its own constrictions, beats
Against us as we walk or struggle up each daily
Minor hill. No feeling – that’s the thing we
Wish for. Breath to stop, to pause, to shout,
to run away. No knowing pain to punctuate
or cause discomfort. And no surgical glances
from hospital juniors who have learned but
do not know the secrets of the heart.
Fat chance. In there are muscles which on
Impulse send us on our way. Theirs is
The power and the end of the story.

Chester 2005

From a Poland Train

The stench of our train in the darkness.
An angry fire consumes poor coal,
the needles shake and shiver, steam
escapes from worn out valves. We are
delivering, but are no express. I wipe
a gauge: a tear of condensation offends
a tidy footplate. The fireman, who, thanks
to war and careless rostering, I do not
know, leans back, resites his cap.
A tender moment, shovel propped.
His throat is full. Expertly, he rolls
the blackened phlegm and spits
it to the night, then checks the firebox.
Momentarily transfixed, the burst
of light records a figure trapped in hell,
then vanishes with a clang of steel.
On time, I utter. The watch that was
My father’s put away. No matter what
the load, the line’s end, or how long
the wait while other transports clear
the ramp, we will be there as scheduled.
Jews! I hear my father’s voice again, the
pounded Sunday fist, the engineer’s skilled
hand bunched in hatred of a race that killed
his Lord. We have them now. Their stench
is what we trail across this land.
Justice. My father’s hand was hard
enough to beat his sinless sons as well.
We take on water, at some Polish halt
that only needs a decent German name
to make it whole again. I  listen to the
boxcars’ groans, the slow and mournful
songs, the pleas for what I cannot understand.
I thank God I am no sentimental woman,
for you too would weaken at the thought
Of what we do, that must be done.
We do not linger. This final night will take
them to the ramp beyond the arch. Then peace
for them, and rest for us. I’d get this ancient train to
give more speed, and help them on their way
if it was not too old, and only fit for scrap.
We are not cruel. It is for all the best.
This ends in morning, for a world they helped
to make, and which now demands a final sacrifice.

Young Animals

It was the House of the Rising Sun. That summer.
’64. We turned our backs on town,
at Rickney Farm the Pevensey levels radiated
water to the sea – such opportunities for boys.

A barn, and hay, and no adult to be found.
Jones tuned his sister’s radio to Caroline. I’d never
heard such moonshine sound, so far from Sunday
dinners, Billy Cotton, Ray’s a Laugh.

At first, we built our fortresses for tanks and planes,
then, though I couldn’t swim, cruised down
wide ditches in the farm canoe. The Panasonic
in its leather case came too – and played the future

underneath the canvas waterline. On such cruises
of discovery did we find the subjects of these dreams –
three girls. Like us, fourteen, and sent. I held
the bow, and David, grinning, got them in.

Old hands in love, we showed them how to paddle,
our landing place the cattle used, the stinking
milk-eyed pike we’d dredged from weeds and thrown
onto the bank. They laughed. We knew sophisticated things.

My mother read the letter from one later on
and showed me, scandalised. We all should meet,
it said, on Sunday afternoon – the pictures
in their town. It was another world

to come, and seeing it my mother raged.
The letter disappeared. Impossible to reach,
We never went and David never knew.
Soon after that the winter came, a birthday,

and I nearly got my way. A radio
to find those pirate feelings on. All they could
afford, it never worked, except to find
the Home on, on a Sunday afternoon.

Eastbourne
August 1993

Jean

Jean in the corridor. I flatter her to see
she’s just the same – a disbelief in self
that makes her think she’s good at nothing.

Today she takes me on one side and asks me
when I need to know about her coming to
my wedding. “I have to have some surgery

and they won’t know till then. I may need
radiography.” A pause long enough
to hold the word that has such weight

no tongue can lift it when its time has come.
A desparate conversation of the eyes.
Funny how we smile. Things pass

into suspension. We walk through doors. The air
warms, it’s summer. Nature teems,
grows, greens, is good. A superabundance

of life believing there’s no knife or winter
to cut it back. “Just turn up on the day,”
I think but do not say the “please”.

“Well, I don’t know. Sometimes, afterwards
You don’t feel so well.” “That’s true,” I say.
But air and words between are like a mask.

We reach the door. The turning point.
“This’ll teach me to look so closely
at myself in showers.” She looks regretful.

A dust of oxide on a precious metal.
“It’s just as well you did,” I say.
Later we see each other through

so many windows as I teach my group.
She’s getting organised for something and she smiles.
How close it is, that smile, and far away.

Tarporley 1990
Eventually, alone except for her sons,
Jean died, about 10 years later