page 57

Monte Cassino

My father came back from the war
unable to disparage the motives of Mussolini,
because ‘he simply picked the wrong horse
at a time when those who were honest
thought Hitler was going to win’.
Principle has no place in war, or,
if not quite that, can rarely sustain itself
when flak's flying and you've no choice
but to keep your head down. His sentiments
I think. He said, ‘Most of us fought because we had to,
and because we were scared of saying No.’
But I don't see him as either cowardly or brave
any more than he sees himself as having
Saved the Free World. I asked him once
if he'd ever killed a man face to face
and he told me of a day at Cassino
when he'd been sent forward to watch and recce.
‘I wouldn't have been 200 yards
from Jerry's position when, to my amazement,
I saw a German soldier emerge from cover
and sit on a stone wall in the sun.
He had his shirt off, sunbathing in full view.
I drew a bead on him and then lowered my rifle.
I couldn't do it. I could have killed him easily.
I never told anyone of the incident.’
For years after the war I listened to his
speech punctuated with Italian words:
andiamo, buon giorno, amici,
uno momento. I was uno bambino.
He had found another language
which he loved as much or more
than his own. It made me realise
page 58 we could have been other, born of others
and brought up somewhere else
with different ways of expressing
similar, or not so similar, things.

Dark Rain

What do you know
it's raining
again

from a deep
black sky.
The thin lines

shimmer:
Hotere's
somewhere

there
south of here,
wherever

the hopeless
rain
must fall.

page 59

Postcard to Ross Stevens

I went out riding
and ended up writing
as often happens to me

and my thoughts
turned to broadcaster Ross Stevens
in his torrential days

and I pondered
the less than common
mutuality of an admiration

for both a man
and the quality of his work
I wanted to say

I see him as a good man
a clever man
in the true and best

sense of the word
and that now I add
a brave man to that list

and hope that one day
when my day comes
I shall be able to look

in the tell-all mirror
and not have to pray
that I can say the same