In Memoriam

For Thomas Morrow

1 Pegasus

The bike, the bike’s momentum

and the road

are all one thing.

It’s like manoeuvres:

every gesture

something that you’re swimming in.

You don’t heft a gun;

something within you does it.

The army does it.

In the kitchen,

you display embarrassment,

your arms so superabundant

that your wife

begins to croon to them.

You make love

with a confidence that’s not your own;

wave goodbye

just as though the stolen bike

is Pegasus and you Bellephoron,

which is to say

you fail to be attuned

to the June light;

to the trees

threshing like corn.

The more you are a part

of the machine,

the more you outrun

the world that makes obeisance

in your wake,

the more you feel

the swift pang of mortality

that comes with a daughter

being born.

*****

2 D-Day

Babies,

bow-legged

with the weight

of Sten guns,

Bren guns,

hand-grenades and magazines.

There is no moon:

each face,

covered in cork,

is like a patch of darkness

broken off.

There’s air

here in your chest,

so that, when you piss,

it feels like it’s just that,

its scuttering line,

that tethers you

to the ground.

In the glider, Players

cigarettes and the daft

syncopation of “Cow Cow Boogie”.

If you can hear your voice

then you’re still here.

You’ve never experienced

another’s arm as being so warm.

No flak: an open corridor,

the glider bumping

blindly against the backrush

of the plane. Again and then again

then silence.

You are easing down,

a lover, into the lower air.

Where were you?

Were you the boy

who feigned a limp?

The one who lay

inside a shell hole

clutching his hands

in prayer? Or did you

breast the air

as though it had

the cleanness of a wave?

Did you see the tank,

its brocade of colour,

as it exploded?

No, I see no difference:

if you had cowered,

we could have joked

about it later on.

You were gunned down,

anyway, at Escoville.

I have a picture of your face,

its wry, hopeful regard,

and wonder how it felt

to be squeezed through

that giant door:

the infinite black sky

without the usual troop of stars.

From My Father is Calling the Neighbours Names, published by Vine Leaves Press.