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Remembrance
(For Michael and Edna Longley)
As I turned the corner I saw
the incline up towards the turn
where stood the house I had once
wished to own.
The houses opposite were boarded
up, their plaster crumbling, mullioned
windows with stone-cut casements
fitted with plywood.
The gutterings were filled with grass
and weed, hanging down the crazy walls.
I was here, at last, in the town whose name
I could not recall.
I was trying as hard as I could:
Tempo? Kilcock? Kilrea? no,
and then I heard them coming up behindó
father and son, walking slowly.
The older man was limping, using a stick,
the younger, middle-aged, plump, and pink,
had an upright bearing and a large shock
of cloudy hair, slightly grey.
They stopped at the kerb though there was
scarcely any need, this place being traffic-less
and empty of life apart from us;
the mild air carried their talk.
The son was telling of his last command,
how the colonel had funked the final order,
leaving him and his company in the usual crap,
falsely fortified in the dread redoubt.
Isolated from the main attacking line,
they were without a flanking defence when
the assault wore down, so there was nothing
for it but to run under open fire
back into knots of canny Charlie all
the fucking way. He saw poor bloody Anderson's
thigh blow up. The two men started off across
the street, the son now holding his father's hand.
Robert Welch |
