Dying is so easy.
Prison transport, Changi To Fukuoka, Japan, 1943
They bullied us into the hold
And screwed the hatch closed
On their shouts and chatter topside.
We panted in the foul air
Dreading an American torpedo.
There was no light for days.
My brother sitting by my side
Was a tense, humid presence
Slippery with perspiration.
There were sobs from in the dark.
From time to time
A man ten feet from me
Would strike a match
And check his watch.
Fifty desperate pairs of eyes
Would turn and stare.
In the smothering darkness
The point of flame
Was like a nail in a wall
That an unhinged man
Could hang a picture on.
Fukuoka
Worse by far
Than hot and hungry
Is cold and hungry.
Alighting, Japan, 1943
Even the gentler guards were kicking us
And shrieking like maniacs.
The locals turned out for the show,
Lining the platform
And then the streets
To hiss and spit
As we hobbled past.
I was in a dirty shirt
And tattered Changi loincloth.
There were dreadful beatings.
The women sneered at us.
The children gathered stones
From the roadside
And hurled them at our bony arses.
Ah, the conquering heroes.
And what right of reply?
I kept my head down.
With my frightened dick
Cringing tiny beneath my lap-lap
Even an angry sideways glance
Would have seemed, to all of us,
More than a little absurd.
First night
It was different then.
There was no Hiroshima.
No 1945.
It was just the beginning of something horrible
That could go on forever.
Prisoners of war
Mostly fetid stillness
And an occasional slick spasm of resentment
Like slimy carp in a diminishing pond-pool
Writhing against a weir.
Signing up
When my father got it in the neck in 1917
Crockery rattled in the kitchen
Of a tiny terrace house in Redfern.
Black lace doily’d a bewildered widow.
The evening that the news came through
Saw us three small children
Asking for dinner at tea-time
Like it was any other day.
My mother wailed.
Not quite comprehending
We cried ourselves to sleep that night
Sensing, correctly, a colossal shift.
Off civvy street
Wally and I joined up together in ’40 –
Two brothers.
It was the done thing.
My mother paled when we sauntered into the kitchen –
Our uniforms and slouch hats,
And our rude boots
Scuffing black into her nice clean linoleum.
Adversaries
We signed up to fight the Germans
Like our parents had.
We hadn’t even thought about the Japs
Who at the time
Might have seemed to us
Somewhat beneath our dignity.
Proving grounds
I recall reeling hard against
A snag beneath the surface,
Bending the rod with
A child’s thin-lipped determination.
When the line snapped
Sending a whisper of thread
Curling like a burnt hair
Over the river
Dad stepped up to me
And took the rod from my hands.
He slipped the handline
Into my palm.
The one for women and tiddlers.
Mum
On the day we shipped out
She took me aside
When my brother wasn’t looking.
She said:
Look after Wally will you?
I. Grudges
I have noticed that the infant’s soft hand,
By some primordial reflex,
Will close involuntarily around a finger
Or lock of hair.
Snatching and the clenched fist
Are ours by instinct.
Opening the palm is a learned gesture.
Invasion
Invasion is a narrowed man
Half rubbed out.
A face smeared sideways.
A distillate reeking of ditch water.
It