Wendy Cole
Auntie Vera
Numbers confuse. Their sheer immensity
hazes my vision.
It’s hard to picture twenty thousand dead
with much precision.
Auntie Vera, lungs infected, died last week:
her image was clearer.
We listened to her gasping muddled thoughts
as the end drew nearer.
Housebound, a statue, mental powers alert,
dressed in a flowered frock,
nose pressed to window, hearing the ticking of
the uncompromising clock.
She was the family, elderly and frail,
guided my youthful badness:
though she is gone, she leaves a sighing gap
and choked-back sadness.
But twenty thousand British people murdered
on one day together!
Such horror saturates my simple being.
I wonder whether,
even allowed the time, I could remember
those I had never known,
human destruction, strewn about the Somme
leaves my mind wholly blown.
Devoid of image, these poor faceless ashes
belong to another era,
easier by far to mourn them all had they
looked like Auntie Vera.
hazes my vision.
It’s hard to picture twenty thousand dead
with much precision.
Auntie Vera, lungs infected, died last week:
her image was clearer.
We listened to her gasping muddled thoughts
as the end drew nearer.
Housebound, a statue, mental powers alert,
dressed in a flowered frock,
nose pressed to window, hearing the ticking of
the uncompromising clock.
She was the family, elderly and frail,
guided my youthful badness:
though she is gone, she leaves a sighing gap
and choked-back sadness.
But twenty thousand British people murdered
on one day together!
Such horror saturates my simple being.
I wonder whether,
even allowed the time, I could remember
those I had never known,
human destruction, strewn about the Somme
leaves my mind wholly blown.
Devoid of image, these poor faceless ashes
belong to another era,
easier by far to mourn them all had they
looked like Auntie Vera.
Page(s) 30
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