Elegies for March ...

I wrote this poem in 2008 after spending the weekend with my parents - Anne and Tessa were with me - 

I first met Volkan in the summer of 1996 - I'm honoured that I can call him my friend -

Elegies for March

Once there was a boy who believed there must be heaven
He saw Jesus on the playground
He held a magic coin hidden in his hand 
Every song must never end

I

In my parents' sparkling house
I see two walking sticks, propped up in a corner 

Beneath a shelf with two shells placed there
Catching the ribbons of sirens' songs

One walking stick belonged to my gran
The other is my mum's
I remember what my mum said 
Let her live until I'm forty - there's their walking sticks
One lumpier than the other, both brown and shiny

My gran died when I was eighteen
I heard the thump of her tiny body on the carpet
My mum crying out

She and her sisters washed her body
They laid her out in the bed I slept in

I saw her lying there, her face smooth like a girl's
All the lines on her face were washed away

She lay there as though she was in pool of clear water
Just below the surface

There's a tiny photograph of her, in the Milkmaid biscuit tin
She's with my mum, in the spidery wheelchair
They're smiling - my mum's written wagons roll on the back of the photograph

I'm in the picture, too, smiling and sun burnt
Pushing the wheelchair along the military road
The ditches under the thorn bushes are full of rainwater
Bright ghosts are swirling in the air

II

My mum says that the pills make a difference
But they won't work forever

She's careful walking on the pavement, as though it's a heaving sea
Gaffers with weird hair greet my dad when we walk to Waitrose
Tessa says he looks like Vladek, from Maus
That tiny vulnerable head

III

I saw a photograph of myself with my brother Nick 

We're wearing khaki shorts, standing upon a stone balcony in Malta

I was just thirteen 

That night there was a violent summer storm
The bells in the churches rung
They said it was the end of the world
The thunder was like the walls of Heaven falling
The lightning was the whips of grief

I saw the black rain fall on the splintered shutters
The courtyards lit with yellow light

IV

Thinking of my mum
I remember Volkan, gentle and kind under a different sky

Volkan's mum died of cancer
The operation was too late

The night before the funeral, the men of the village stayed in one house, the women in another

That night, her body was washed, wrapped in white
They told stories about her life

I washed her hair
I cut her nails 

She was carried upon the shoulders of the men
The women followed behind
Going up the hill to the stony cemetery outside the village

Volkan told me about the two angels and Paradise

V

My dad moves forward across the carpet
He says when you go the house seems empty 

His words like Volkan's twist my heart

Once there was a boy who believed there must be Heaven
I see him before me now
He reaches out to touch my hand


March 15 2008