ANZAC Day, Hobart 1981

The chill slid off the mountain,
unsettled hems and made collars of wind.
Women stretched gloved hands
up to their hats, jamming them on
with their convictions.
Wreaths deserted, scuttling away.

During the address it rained
and the rain stung like there was sand
in it. With his light drawing in
behind these blessed cataracts
I couldn’t handle grandpa, never having really
touched him as a child.

But I steered him timidly by the elbow
of the Good Suit, because
didn’t you know, dear
you can’t wear medals on an overcoat,
finding instead leather-patched tweed
whiffing of Drum, how he would lower himself
wincing into chairs. To think

he carried round shrapnel in his spine
for sixty-odd years. Somewhere in France
they’d repaired it with silver
and without anaesthetic.

The hatted women watched him
clinging coatless to a metal chair,
dismasted in the swell of seats,
and clucked their disapproval at me
from a safe distance. I hoped
he wouldn’t die just yet. Lost in those rows
he might have been still searching for names
in a Flanders cemetery.

The last post cast its grieving intervals
over the ghosts in the grass
and the witnesses. And trailing behind it
two minutes that weren’t silence at all
but grandpa’s version
of Look for the silver lining,
a chin-wobbling tremolo from the driver’s seat,
while we took our chances
and scuffled in the back.

And here beside me now
was the always-old, that age had wearied
at eighteen, thinning to nothing in the wind
like a lie when the truth is out.

© Louise Oxley