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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Graham Mort

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Amnesiac

The mirror shows me a map of skin
Without reference points:
I have seen other men like him
And that faint scar on his temple
Means nothing.

The light behind me is as clean
As the future:
Whatever past I’ve had is splintered
Like a looking glass.

I’m like a baby just born:
No worries, no shame or regret,
No guilt about the things I’ve done.
The women I’ve loved have let me start again.
I won’t miss them or wet my pillow
With bitter tears.

Yesterday I searched my body inch by inch:
No tattoos or birthmarks, it meant nothing,
Like the body of any fifty year old man.
My lungs tell me I’ve never smoked
And my heart is steady as a clock.

I stare at my hands, try to recall
What they have touched, mended, broken.
My signature may have sealed contracts,
Warrants, treaties between nations:
I take a pen, fill a blank sheet with names,
Accuse myself of them, one by one.

I have this vocabulary in place,
This way of speaking
Which comes from nowhere.
They tell me that friends and family
Will be looking for me:
It is only a matter of time.

Whatever is lost may be found.
But when I saw that man in the dock
Trying to hand back his name -
Flashbacks to mass graves, flickering
White faces behind barbed wire - and
Witnesses accusing him across forty years,
I folded the sheet, found a clean envelope,
Posted it with no address.

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