In the twilight of the ward
the old woman pulls me to her side
She whispers into the whorled shell of my ear
Her voice, dancing on a roaring tide,
surfs sixty years of life with West Coast ease.

I let down my hair, she said, in the Spanish War
After the lice, the blood, the mucus-mud
of that First Conflagration, many women
cut their hair in short bobs and snaky curls. 
Not me. I treasured my braids. Daytime 
on the ward I wore them tightly bound,
moulded to my brow like a Roman helmet
At night I brushed them out, tress by golden tress, 
a miserly Rapunzel alone in my room.


We’ve had our own wars of course,
since that prelude in Spain, 
Not the innocence of man to man,
but raped cities, riven skies and fire storms
No so much cloth-capped anarchy 
and fluttering wall posters pitted
gallantly against a tyranny of steel 
Nowadays learned argument and justification 
provides comfort for men in suits 
as the heart is ripped out of men and cities 
and the price of planes, barbed wire and gas 
is paid in flesh and pain 
administered by medallioned clerks.


In the twilight of the ward
the voice in my ear is now a fading tide
I smell salt and iodine, Dettol and rotting fish.
My hair fell loose in Spain, she murmurs
I let it lift in the warm wind from the sierra

© Wendy Robertson