We’re ready to leave, most of us, tonight.
Even Grandmother, who keeps her chair
close to the empty stove and insists she won’t move.
Light as a hen to lift, though; and doesn’t she
look like a hen, wrapped in all her clothes
and with her bony shins jutting out!
The stove is another, heavier matter:
old, taken-for-granted family friend.
What a waste and shame to leave it behind,
yet what can we do, with every handcart in town
wheeled away weeks ago? We’ve been too slow –
days blown in futile haggling with those brothers
from nowhere and their imaginary lorry.
I knew the truth as soon as I felt my banknotes,
a wad as thick as a book, prised from my fingers.
“A lorry!” my clever son cried. “Where
“would the petrol have come from?” He’s staying.
He has a new business: picking over the rubbish heaps.
It may lead to bigger things. He’s helping us
tie our bundles now, telling us what to put in,
what to forget. Cruel decisions. The donkey
will come with us, of course, but not the goat.
Should we untether her, or would it make any difference
whether she walks into gunfire, or waits
till it comes to her? I think I’ll let her die
tied to the fig-tree she knows so well.
It’s a wonder the house itself has not yet been hit
by artillery fire from either side, or commandeered
by the boys in ill-assorted uniforms,
who now rush up and down our narrow lanes,
gesticulating with their weapons and shouting
in foreign accents. Praise God, we’ll be gone
before any such thing happens.
Dusk already. Ice in the air. Those flashes, too,
that threaten to replace our familiar constellations.
At the agreed hour, we’ll be out through the back gate.
I’ll say a silent goodbye to the garden
and its pots of herbs, as we pass through.
Then eleven of us will be on our way:
Grandmother carried – complaining no doubt –
between a pair of us; the rest trudging with our
various dreams and despairs to keep us diverted,
towards the mountains and a distant country
none of us ever wished to visit.
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