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lifetime

SUCH PEOPLE TO LOVE

As I leaf through the three albums you have made –

mostly of your photographs plus some

of my poems – one book for each of her years –

I realise we are ready for the fourth

and how every day of every

year has been as full as a lifetime.

 

You have only caught her best side – quite right

too – as she grows up into her self: none

of those heartbreaking, fearful tantrums where

her world becomes chaotic, senseless with

her sense of injustice in a world of giants.

 

I almost write ‘the miracle of her growth’,

though godless – ‘wonder’ will do just as well.

And I wonder what she will be at fourteen,

thirty four, fifty four…and what her world

will be like. Ah, immortal longings –

to try to conjure the future as if

I might be there! Who would have thought when I was

four that hearts would be transplanted, glaciers

melt – and I would have such people to love?

 

 

 

IN MEMORIAM

 

Bernard Selzer 1917-1943
Bernard Selzer 1917-1943

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He has been dead in the African earth

my lifetime. I am old enough to be

his grandfather. He used to shadow me,

sometimes like a conscience. Was I the man

he had been? I know him from photographs

and anecdotes.  He is a stranger, young

and silent, smiling at my mother.

Death devastated both their lives: was painful,

pointless, undignified, whoever

he was, has become – Plot A, Grave 5,

Ibadan Military Cemetery.

All those indistinguishable bones –

Muslims, privates, fathers!