Читать книгу Armada - Brian Patten - Страница 7

Long long ago

when everything I was told was believable

and the little I knew was less limited than now,

I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond

and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.

A broken fortress of twigs,

the paper-tissue sails of galleons,

the waterlogged branches of submarines –

all came to ruin and were on flame

in that dusk-red pond.

And you, mother, stood behind me,

impatient to be going,

old at twenty-three, alone,

thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us.

In a hospital a mile or so from that pond

I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,

reach out across forty years to touch once more

that pond’s cool surface,

and it is your cool skin I’m touching;

for as on a pond a child’s paper boat

was blown out of reach

by the smallest gust of wind,

so too have you been blown out of reach

by the smallest whisper of death,

and a childhood memory is sharpened,

and the heart bums as that armada burnt,

long, long ago.