1981
[thinking of Tony Fomison, 1939–1990]
Only the two cops will remember
and they’re not talking.
‘Move off, lady’, one came at me
when I got between you and his baton.
They had you across the back of a car
during those ridiculous times
when streets were filled with boots
great coats, shields, helmets and jumbo bins.
The Red Squad screamed round in circles
looking for all our world like some bizarre voodoo rite
gone mad in Newmarket.
We were the same age but you were small
and wizened. A boy with an old face,
seeming at least in this scene to need protection.
I threw myself across your body
hoping not to crush you with my weight
and they stopped, not daring quite to bash up
a middle-aged virago articulate with rage.
How did it end? Did we go off together?
I know I berated Meurant on his Khyber Pass
corner playing commander. I took photos
but where are they? I can’t remember
and now neither can you.
Perhaps there’s a note somewhere here
in a diary or a book, a box in a cupboard
but who cares? Who are we
in the confusion of repeated histories?
The fire in the cave still burns
and out there in the darkness, your face
lifted to the night stars
knows ‘the soul is at home
in its own strange dream’.
Taken with kind permission from the recently published collection Blue Is a Cracked Vase in Memory by Riemke Ensing (Cold Hub Press, $33), available in selected bookstores nationwide. It includes poems from her previous three books along with more than 60 previously uncollected poems. Settings and subjects include Muriwai, Otago Harbour, Colin McCahon, and poor old Tony Fomison.
