Family Inquest

Tell me,
Were you really that young once?
Long dark haired, small breasted, smooth skinned.
The nervous shop assistant selling
Neat rolls of haberdashery?
Later, a crisp dental nurse,
An evening dancer with soldiers
Waiting for a second war?

When, like others, you quickly married your soldier,

Our father safely now in heaven,
Home from the horrors of war,
Did you later, in that terraced house neatness,
Your mother a dark thought,
Dare touch gently into the night
Tempting the terrible beauty of love?

Did post war motherhood ration your later love

Counted out in ounces like bacon, butter or cheese?
Was it you, a dictator of the 60’s,
Who invented our own Cold War? Building walls,
Strengthening home borders, looking for spies,
Drawing up battle lines with relatives, friends and neighbours,
Exiling him to the far silence of the garden
While taking no prisoners?

Despite your later gentling of ways

One by one we left you,
Never really coming back.
But, now, free of your control
Yet, still moored to the past,
We, too, have learnt the economy of love.
Was this your plan?

And, now, finally, you have gone.

Gone naked to dust, scattered with the wind;
Gone into emptiness where
Hiding in a void reserved for ghosts
You will wait for us one by one;
Never letting go,
Continuing to haunt.