This morning I was going through a book called The Poetics of Indeterminacy by Marjorie Perloff. One of the chapters was called ‘”The Space of a Door”: Beckett and the Poetry of Absence’.
I wrote the following few lines: ‘The space of a door / displaces me / frames a no, / a yes, / a maybe…’ and then I left it to finish later.
This evening I went to a most moving launch of a book written by one of my very talented uni colleagues, Kristina Olsson. The extraordinary story is called Boy, Lost; Kristina’s mother lost her baby boy, Peter, when he was snatched by his father from her arms as she sat in a train waiting to leave Cairns. I was privileged to hear Kristina, her sister Sharon and their lost – now found – brother Peter, speak so eloquently and bravely about the secrets, the heartache and ultimately the healing.
Then I came home and finished the poem.
boy, found
(I)
The space of a train door
displaces him
frames a no,
a yes,
a maybe,
faces her towards
a terrible symmetry;
safety for them both
was for her
pinned here
on the nearer side of there,
was for her stolen infant
there
on the further side of her(e).
(II)
Decades of tight-lipped memories,
secret sibling absence
a haunting presence
in the hearts of innocents,
waiting patiently.
(III)
A lifetime.
A searching.
A file.
A family found.