You always rang the bells (no one else knew just how)
well into my straggling Introitus. Their cheerful imperatives
ringing far beyond that wheezy old
harmonium, at which I worked to breathlessness, dragging
unwilling parish voices into song. Until your baritone conviction
nudged the melody towards heaven and the final chord.


In the same way you stopped entire restaurants with that
familiar ‘eyes closed!’ as we seething bent our heads for grace -
and waiters stopped in consternation.
Mother, minding our manners, moved gently on.


And then, when you could once
again enter the country of your past, we found
the lake where you had lived in the
toy-box tiny village, untouched behind the iron curtain.


In a rattling minibus borrowed from a friend, we traced
the route you took in ’45, when the front
was closing in at last.
It was August then and glorious; but in your eyes
a cold December grew, as you remembered
the panzers, the soldiers, the noise of it;
your sister, and helplessness.


Later you and a stranger, about the same age,
who lives in your home,
shared both your reading glasses and the dictionary
to speak about the orchard.
And at lunch my children bent their heads,
eyes closed, before you’d even said to.