What a powerful poem I plagiarized from an Aussi friend. I don’t know if it sprang from the awful deaths recently of the desperate migrants or if it foretold the disaster. Nevertheless it reaches deep inside me to trouble my soul.
CARGO by George Szirtes
Consider the drowned
packing the sea and rising
like a dank mountain.
Crowding the water,
packed close like cargo, the drowned
vanish unlisted.
How deep the sea is,
how fierce and cold, untroubled
by its history.
We have history
in which we drown our sorrows
as in saltwater.
We don’t understand
death in the way the sea does.
We set out in hope.
Now we lie, piled up,
as if we were intended
to be together.
But nothing is meant.
The sea does not bear meaning.
It is just a throat.
We too have our throats
but they are filled with water
and grief and money.
Those who ferry us
betray us. We can’t trust them
but rely on them.
You will recall us
in your private drowned moments.
You will recall us.
I am now in the countdown from this festive weekend of the Wedding of my granddaughter. Doris has just called me presenting two issues. She wants to know what time we are leaving Saturday for Annapolis and I replied 9 AM. She wailed that the Hairdresser cannot take her until 9 AM. This plan has been in effect for us for several months and I told Doris to let the Hairdresser know thus was unacceptable and as a long time client she expects more consideration. Doris told her this and now the woman will come to Doris’s house on Friday her normal day off.
The next issue came off the wall and was totally unexpected. Doris thought we should get separate rooms so that the others didn’t thing we were sleeping together. I told her that my Daughter in Law, Margaret, booked the rooms and that the whole idea of the single room was so I could sleep with her and also enhance my reputation with family and friends. I also added that I had no intention of being relegated to sleeping on a couch. Anyone looking at us and our ages will only think ” God bless them “. Doris said ” OH”. I think that that stress is creeping into the picture.
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