This is a poem I wrote on what was to be my last visit to Anna in late January of 2020. Already the Coronavirus was raging in China and its terrible and devastating effects were soon to become apparent in Italy. It was one of the many trips I made from Italy over the 2 years and 10 months Mum was at Rush Court.

 An Italian said to me, almost insistently,

‘Yes, but whatever peace you may wish her,

la Mamma è sempre la Mamma'.

'At least that is here what we say.’

I thought later that that was right.

You were always there.

From the start.

Are there still.

The still centre of my world.

Eternal.

Present.

And I feel almost panic.

That one day soon you will be gone.

Absent.

How sad and frightening

I foresee that being for me.

And though I’m 63

And have spent long years away

You have secretly remained,

the stubborn linchpin around which my compass swings

and steadies.

You were my north star even as I ventured south.

In these last year’s

Have we not achieved a softening,

An alchemical distillation of soft May evening light?

Somehow we dissolved

The rancour and bitterness.

The shadow-boxing ceased.

That wariness of the

Jawbone swinging hurt

We each could inflict

Found it was not needed still.

The clock spring

Of our irritations

Wound down.

A truce,

A hint of peace

Prevailed.

We held each other’s eye

Beyond the narrow horizons

Of our beginnings.

I have witnessed your noble heart-breaking aloneness.

And tried like some raft upon swift flowing waters

To tether myself beside you.

I, your fickle lighter, too often away.

But really here when here.

Distraught as I slip away again

On the early rising tide.

My sense of my emotions

Is like those fleeting cloud shadows over

That hill (Moel Ysgyfarnogod)

behind that house (Cae Rhys)

in that Wales (Trawsfynydd).

I am heavy with the rain and the wind to come.

Weather’s approaching and I have nowhere left to run.

Cwm Bychan, Bryn Goleu and Cae Adda

None can help me now.

Those cradles of the boy that became the man

Long gone.

Returning to the beginning

I’d choose to translate it thus:

‘For me you are forever my mother always’.

As well, of course as a woman in your own right

And a daughter too,

Long travelled from your native home.

But daughter still

With all the trouble and waspish glory

Implied by that simple single word.

But for me you are inescapably my mother.

Forever. Eternal.

Until the end.

And I forever.

Always.

Your son.

Until my end too.

È vero. It’s true.

Beyond the banality of the bleeding obvious:

La mamma è sempre

la mamma.

Don’t go.

And yet in peace

Go still into that night.

My love a light

Small but constant

Shining

Burning

Bright.

To: From Ann and Emma