Poetica Magazine

Dedicated to Anna

.

I’ll bring the string to your house

and we can play cat’s cradle

After hopscotch in the yard

we’ll feast on cream cheese bagels.

.

Your sister plays a waltz by Strauss

your brother reads his Goethe

old masters decorate your walls

for culture look no further.

.

Your dad tends those with sprains and flu

the parlour is his surgery

your mum weighs new born babies

at the local infirmary.

.

Today at school a yellow star

is pinned upon your coat

and pupils pledge allegiance

to the government by rote.

.

When next I came to your house

the windows were all broken

daubed on walls, the swastika,

for you the fascists token.

.

The hospital informed your mum

‘Of your kind we’ll be ridden’

Patients of your dad were told

consulting was forbidden.

.

Your fine Van Goghs now grace the walls

of galleries and museums

Books and jewellery paid the price

of clothes and a few crumbs.

.

On Tuesday when I rang your bell

an answer came there none.

Each passing day I wonder where

your family have gone.

.

Mother says that all is well

you’ve gone on holiday

But surely you’d have said goodbye

before you went away

.

I miss our cosy game of house

our dollies’ hair we’d comb

I wish that you would come home soon

I’m lonely on my own.

.

********************

.

Rainbow spectrum in the fountain’s droplets

grass, newly mown, pungent and sweet

Cypress, sturdy, stretches to clear sky

Lilly and rose kiss in flower beds neat.

.

Gravel crunches under leather sandals

each bench lonely as I amble past

Then sunshine glints on hair of titian

dawns recognition, I am aghast.

.

Playmate once lost sits silent, serene,

stares straight ahead, eyes all-knowing and stark.

Reverie broken I awake to discover

my old confidante now found in the park.

.

We embrace till petals start to close

our senses stilled by shock

Five long years have done their worst

We can’t put back the clock.

.

Questions, questions must be answered

I never swallowed mother’s lies

Tell me where your journey took you

Tell me what has dulled your eyes.

.

Truck’s icy metal stuck fast to downy cheek

sleepy hamlets glimpsed through a crack

On arrival souls were graded

you cried goodbye to your mother’s back.

.

Old, sick? ‘Go take a shower!’

‘Gay? – your mind must be unsound!’

Shell-shocked dregs were shaved and branded –

arm’s soft skin is where it’s found.

.

Smoky plumes rose from the chimney

acrid fumes caught in dry throats,

Chivvying them along their way

a forced orchestra’s jolly notes.

.

Baby skin? - fashioned for lampshades

Gold-capped teeth? - melted down

Fat that made the smoothest soap

cloth of hair that made a gown.

.

Potato peelings sneaked from bins

to cheat the bellies so distended

They said ‘Work will make you free!’

So, dark was the sky when our day ended.

.

The doctor – how his hot hands grappled

Our innocence he did pervert

The guards – how their whips stung like fire

The more they beat, the less it hurt.

.

I turned my mind in on itself

Fleas were my only friends

My parents? Lost. My siblings? Lost.

That’s how my story ends.

.

Raw terrors permeate my soul

yet they ask me to forgive –

Forgive, I may - but can’t forget

as long as I shall live.

.