Poetry: Anthony Wade

Anthony Wade

Lines Of Difference

The girls drew the squares,

tongues out, peeping wetly

as they stretched

broad white chalk lines

chopping ash-grey pavement

into numbered pieces

but when they skipped their game

their fluttering dresses

were Pavlovian to the tribe

collected at the bottom of our street,

provoking an alien anger that prompted

a rugged response from our tribe above.

We were immigrants all

in a stranger’s unwelcoming land

but they, too,

called us stupid, we, too,

thought them ignorant,

all of us quick with the hand,

even quicker with the foot,

childish brutality

over a children's game.

It was in our families

that difference was learnt,

and from politicians who encouraged

those who sneered, and spat oaths

and looked down from however low,

and looked on as children fought

in the street over childish chalk lines,

a simple symbol loudly shouting,

‘you're other, we’re better.’

***

Silent Voices Heard In The Silence

(On Visiting the Holocaust Extension, Jewish Museum, Berlin)

I heard the most familiar voices

around the small detritus of daily life,

a voice from a tea cup and saucer here

recalling family gatherings,

part of a matching set long dispersed,

and there a crowded postcard sent in hope,

until my heart overspilled when I stood

before the clothes that once

carried the scent of a loved one,

now just anybody’s …. nobody’s.

The voices were loud in the silence

of those who refine, who embellish society,

honoured alumni of institutions

renowned in every cultured society,

grave voices giving eloquent witness

that the clothes of culture

do not advance a society

if they drape merely

the nakedness of hatred.

And I heard, too, voices waiting in the wings 

for time's tides to wash out stains of guilt,

for memory to move from the past

to the absolution of amnesia,

not to exculpation, or exoneration,

merely …. forgetfulness.

***

A Legacy of Migration

The Grandparents were forced

to leave their home land

by the distant decisions

of men of power far above them,

and to journey into lives of exile,

where they learned to live

with endemic discrimination,

shed the racial abuse of strangers,

and, while never losing their longing

for the old country long visited

in song and memory,

accorded respect to the land

that had indifferently let them in,

and lived their lives quietly

and industriously, aware

of the opportunities for schooling,

earning, keeping a roof over their heads,

and died as quietly,

knowing they had done their duty,

confident their children,

and also their children,

while always proud of their roots,

would make of the land of exile

their own cherished home land.

***

Not Another Thomas Paine

He claimed to be a radical reformer,

beholden to no secret sponsors,

unbesmirched by previous politics,

offering to restore uncorrupted government

to the people, vowing that

President Roosevelt’s “forgotten”

would be rescued from decades of dismissal

when weighed against other interests

that made others wealthier.

Established circles voiced

disbelief, dismay, even anger 

on his defeat of a preferred politician,

and the contempt for him continued,

as it did, it seemed to others,

for the many millions

he claimed to represent,

diverse targeted groups with grievances,

half of whom were tagged by his opponent

as in “a basket of deplorables”.

Incomes of certain of the lowest paid

did increase, and their children

were not sent to die in foreign wars,

in stark contrast to his more recent predecessors,

though many claimed that his

were the forgotten of an earlier,

less inclusive age,

and their preferment would breed

further division in a divided society,

and doubts about his character,

and true motives continued,

until his refusal to honour

the noble obligation of loser consent,

the capstone of the beautiful anomaly

that is democracy, and incitement

to public protest in his personal cause,

condemned him to a perpetual place

of dishonourable remembrance,

and a place in his own Circle of Hell.

***

Bio

Anthony Wade, Irish, an England-trained lawyer who worked mainly in The Netherlands, has published in poetry magazines around the world, both in print and online, including in Setu Bilingual. He lives now by the sea in East Cork, Ireland, and is an active member of the Midleton Writers’ Group.

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Setu, January 2021