As we go

Contact the poet: mwambani@hotmail.com


Sunday 24 April 2011

M.O.T.H.S

(Memorial order of tin hats)


The caretaker of my one bedroom flat in downtown Jo’burg
seemed so pleased at my arrival, he had some boys deliver the
biggest fridge I’d ever seen, as a favour to a ‘special’ tenant,

and in his bare room in the ground floor basement hung an
enormous photograph of his presentation to a young Queen,
in recognition of long years as a Japanese prisoner of war.

Several times he invited me to a party of old comrades
which I eagerly accepted, but he always forgot, and just
as I was about to give up hope, he turned up

at my door one evening with a smile and a set of keys,
and I drove his battered old car through unfamiliar streets
and we got lost, and arrived just in time as the old chaps

took their seats; someone fumbled with the light switch;
and in the darkness the commanding officer struck a match
and lit a candle that was melted onto an upturned tin helmet

placed on the table in front of him. And round and about me,
I felt old backs stiffen, and for a brief moment as the Transvaal
sun went down, any trace of dementia had all but disappeared.




John H Davies
24th April 2011 

No comments:

Post a Comment