Peace Talks

by Andrew Motion

  In Belsen,

  from the flagstone path that swerves

  past one mass grave

  shaped like a flat-topped Neolithic long-barrow

  to the next mass grave,

  and wanders too

  beside free-standing headstones

  bearing individual names or family names,

  Anne Frank’s among them,

  that cannot be placed exactly

  where the bodies lie

  but remember them,

  I brought away a pine cone,

  one of thousands darkening the ground.

  I carried it home and placed it here

  on my windowsill in the open air

  and milder English sun.

  Now its stiff woody elements,

  brown with darker brown fringes,

  have turned into a creature

  with manifold silent mouths

  all stretched open to their fullest extent.

  When I pick it up

  it is lighter than before,

  almost weightless between my fingers

  but rustling faintly as I revolve it,

  taking me back to the tree that reared above me

  with its baked and fissured trunk,

  and the stone path I was halfway down,

  and the graves I had passed

  and those still to come

  flattened under their gloss of flowering heather

  and spirals of lark song.

  Little one. Little

  creature abandoned.

  Tell me

  what should I do next

  with your useless beauty.

  I breathe. I exclaim

  when your brittle weight passes

  from my hand onto the windowsill again;

  the breeze catches and rolls it,

  threatening a fall,

  then a moment later drifts idly away

  and there you stay.

  Finis

  Bare facts and staggering multitudes: what hope

  what possible hope left for language with finish?

  Light. Knock. Road. Engine. Rail. Truck. Cold. Night.

  Whatever these words meant, they no longer mean.

  *

  A conductor’s baton twitches to the left or right:

  this one has been selected to die, this one not yet.

  Clothes. Belt. Shoes. Watch. Ring. Gold tooth. Hair.

  Silence is singing instead from the guts of a violin.

  *

  Not to go mad, or to go mad and understand madness,

  to gaze steadily on the world with the eyes of Lazarus.

  Lager. Barracks. Bunks. Kapos. Musselmans. Chimney.

  The mind cannot skip the air and mingles with smoke.

  *

  Buried in each, the appearance they still remember

  but transparent, with no existence in the others near.

  Work. Soup. Mud. Work. Snow. Work. Soup. Gone.

  The body is murdered over and over devouring itself.

  *

  A white plain outside under the flight of the crows

  and men standing there like a spinney of withered trees.

  Sky. Cloud. Earth. Grass. Bird. Field. Hedge. Wheat.

  Prayer rising and God’s spittle falling on bare heads.

  *

  What hope, what possible hope for finish? My father,

  I wanted to tell you something, but I did not know what.

  Language, the tip flickering to and fro, threw out a voice.

  A wavering flame … like a speaking tongue … so I set forth …

  A Tile from Hiroshima

  Look at it this way

  mud

  sludge

  sand

  scooped from the bay

  a mould

  fired

  at a thousand degrees

  glittery green-black

  inside the typical

  grey

  and

  dull earth worn underfoot

  made

  a roof overhead

  *

  Look at it this way

  Democritus coined atomos

  solid

  unchanging

  particles

  then

  two thousand years

  with the vaults of nature

  locked

  and silence in the laboratories

  silence on this at least

  before

  a shape

  John Dalton

  he gave the idea a shape

  a sphere

  a billiard ball

  or millions of billiard balls

  and

  every one changeable

  if

  they are left to themselves

  with energy very great energy

  fizzing in space containing

  particles like

  like what

  like marbles

  Rutherford says

  or planets

  miniature planets revolving

  call them

  the whisper of nature

  changeable yes

  vibrating yes

  and quick to jump

  jumping from one

  one orbit or shell to another

  vibrating like

  like a wave like what

  like violin strings like what

  continue

  look at it this way

  Chadwick decides

  this

  the neutron this

  the positron this

  the charged electron

  speeding the particle up

  smashing them

  but

  no chain

  not yet no nothing

  like trying to shoot down birds from the sky

  in the dark

  in a country with

  very few birds

  look at it this way

  uranium

  ah

  that is the chain

  beginning

  that

  is the heat

  the light

  the natural order of things

  interrupted

  that

  I may rise

  and stand

  that

  and bend your force to break

  *

  Look at it this way. From the observation plane flying high

  over the city with sunlight rippling along its silver belly

  there is a clear view of offices and schools and factories

  and wood-frame houses all with roofs of the same dark tiles

  fanning over the six flat islands formed by the seven rivers

  branching at regular intervals from the principal river the Ota

  and a population of two hundred and forty-five thousand souls

  including ten thousand enslaved Koreans with the pensioners

  already working to make firebreaks in case those are needed

  and troops and others digging trenches in the surrounding hills

  where they expect to fight to the last man following the invasion

  and children tearing up pine roots to make oil for airplane fuel

  or moulding fist-sized sand-balls held together by a floury paste

  which are intended to be thrown from a safe distance into the fire

  and before the plane vanishes from sight also several fine bridges

  that even from such a height appear to sway in the salmonish sun

  now that a warm front has settled across this part of the Empire

  and black water beneath that looks so pure it must be drinkable.

  *

  Now a second plane also very high

  invisible in fact

  but look at it this way

  a Superfortress

  stripped rewired

  modified

  No. 82 Enola Gay

  for the mother of Commander Tibbets

  since she supported Tibbetts

  when he d
ropped out of Med School

  and forty kilometres out

  Captain Lewis adding to his log

  Everyone has a big hopeful look on his face.

  *

  Look at it this way

  was it a meteor striking

  was it a gigantic photograph

  taken by the Americans

  was it a Molotov Flower Basket

  made of separate charges

  was it the sun falling from the sky

  was it magnesium powder

  exploding when it made contact

  with the city power system

  was it a new weapon entirely

  a genshi bakudan

  the original child bomb.

  *

  Imagine at least imagine

  a bell-shape in the air

  a dome-shape

  dead centre beneath the detonation

  and the flash the blast

  rushing out through streets above

  sewers

  below ground

  and

  the bodies of the population

  look at it this way

  a bell-shape

  and roof tiles on every house

  where

  every house stood

  like fish scales melting

  not melting quite

  glossy

  glossy and slipping

  down slipping

  down through fire

  ash ghost

  nothing

  to sweat there.

  *

  Look at it this way no longer

  the roof overhead and sparrows arguing there

  but a tile weeping in the dustbowl of the house

  no longer

  the breakfast ration of rice steaming on a table

  but a still-unripe pumpkin roasted on the vine

  no longer

  the shadow patrolling among water lily leaves

  but a carp poached belly-up in its own juices

  no longer

  the X-ray plate lying undeveloped in the in-tray

  but the same plate printed with a pure whiteness

  no longer

  the rush hour traffic stalled crossing a bridge

  but hundreds of mangled bicycles without tyres

  no longer

  a rain shower sweeping down from a low cloud

  but moisture-drops with the weight of marbles

  no longer

  a doctor among ruins handing out good advice

  but Excuse me for having no burden like yours

  no longer

  men women and children walking towards you

  but the skin slithering from their hands and faces

  but burn-prints of metal buckles and suspenders

  but eye sockets empty because eyes have melted.

  *

  Look at it

  this way

  here is Dr Bronowski what

  is he doing

  here in the rubbish

  here among weeds

  the weeds

  that spring from ashes

  the bluets and Spanish bayonets

  goosefoot

  the morning glories

  day lilies

  feverfew

  panic grass panic

  grass feverfew glories

  he is collecting he is

  choosing this tile from the ruins

  he knows

  what does he know

  he knows

  a tile of this type

  is locally used melting point

  thirteen hundred degrees

  what else

  he knows the ascent of man

  he thinks he knows

  how one thing

  becoming another thing

  in the ascent

  descends

  and

  senna he knows

  sickle senna

  so much so many

  here at the centre the eye

  the plane

  might almost have dropped it

  almost

  but senna

  dropped from a plane

  the very idea

  look at it this way

  here

  though burned

  though fired to a deeper black

  a glossier black

  in the melting

  here

  with feverfew

  panic grass panic grass

  here is the tile

  the tile which jumped to his hand

  and settled

  and settled

  surviving

  look at it

  this way.

  The Fence

  I found my way home but it was not until summer

  ended that my mother brought herself to ask me

  to make good the fence that marks our boundary.

  I went out there with a box of nails and a hammer

  and when a flock of crows in the trees surrounding

  made some comment, I remembered how the birds

  living by Shamash Gate spoke in perfect harmony

  with mortar shells falling. Then I began knocking

  nails into the wood and everything near took fright

  although not my mother, who continued watching

  from her chair on the porch. I have said nothing yet

  of what it is like to reach the exact point where one

  place becomes another, with no way forward or back,

  and there is nothing else left to do except fall down.

  Peace Talks

  1 War Debts

  I started

  living with Debbie when I was fifteen,

  but I was never the best-behaved boy in school

  so obviously she had a bit of a battle there.

  Then I went to college but I sacked that,

  so my sister’s boyfriend

  he asked me

  have you thought about joining the army,

  and I told him

  I’ve not

  but I will now,

  and next thing there I was

  doing my Phase One at Purbright,

  then Lark Hill

  the rolling plains.

  We knew

  right

  we knew we were going out,

  and it was like,

  guys,

  this is going to be tough.

  Did you know Camp Bastion is the size of Reading?

  I didn’t know.

  And ninety-five degrees with your body armour.

  You wonder how they miss you to be honest,

  throwing their stuff over the walls.

  But they do miss you

  most of the time.

  One of my mates, he got hit, though,

  I say hit,

  by a shower of Afghan fingers.

  Suicide bomber in the road outside.

  Normally the alarm gets you first

  but even then you’ll be

  wow,

  wow,

  something is real.

  My friends at home

  can’t understand what I’m saying.

  It’s the anticipation I’m used to.

  It’s the news I’m waiting to hear.

  No rumours.

  Everyone quiet and waiting for the facts.

  Surreal if I’m honest.

  Surreal when I get back.

  The ease. The slow pace.

  In Subway, for instance.

  Cucumbers. Tomatoes.

  You think:

  Get it done now, so everyone can go.

  Just come on!

  Then you leave

  and road works are everywhere

  with nothing moving.

  And rain pattering down

  and clouds covering the stars.

  The war debts will come out then.

  You think:

  my weapon

  where is my weapon?

  And you look for it.

  You did everything with you
r weapon

  and urgh

  you miss it.

  Nobody understands.

  You miss it.

  You went to the toilet with it.

  And the shower with it.

  You went running with it.

  You did everything with it.

  If you had a doss bag,

  you kept it close as you could,

  or in your doss bag

  sort of thing.

  It’s trust, you see,

  you have to trust your weapon.

  It’s individual.

  I’m Stephen North.

  Lance Bombardier Stephen North.

  2 Ficklety

  This time we were looking at transition, the next incarnation.

  It’s interesting. Soldiers carry a lot on their hats you know,

  and we talk together about sadness, the ficklety of mortality.

  One man, he was always getting sand out of his nose and ears,

  and as more sand came to him, more and more sand and dust,

  he counted it, he knew how many grains of sand there were.

  As for me, I read the Psalms. The wilderness. The helplessness.

  The rocks, stones, wind and thorn trees. I encountered them all.

  But a dog collar? No. Collar crosses instead and a tactical flash.

  Then I came home and here are my children and my little list:

  roof needs fixing, grass needs a cut, the long green grass,

  we need such and such for the kitchen, bathroom, everywhere,

  and aah I’ve wrapped the car round a tree, aah. It’s interesting.