February 1949, ‘Senor Legarreta,’
ornithologist, hunches in the back seat
bundled up in blankets,
a spurious itchy beard fogging
his thick glasses. They all know his voice
so he does not speak. He is thinking
as usual, about shoes, and freedom.
Pablo Neruda is crossing
the mountains, fleeing for his life.
It is February 1949, I have
my own tricky pass to negotiate.
On horseback he overcomes
powerful trees, impassable rivers,
enormous crags, desolate snows
My mother, her waters breaking over
bed, lino, doesn’t make it to hospital.
In a spring he washes
away the dirt of memory,
rides into the dawn. Go to
the best hotel. Pedrito Ramirez will be
waiting for you there. My grandmother
enters with scissors and a bowl of water;
my father, as my head pokes into view,
panics, rings for assistance. My mother
will only go to Woolwich – she’s
booked in there, not Lewisham. When
the midwife appears, I am already tumbled
in my father’s pyjamas. An ambulance
arrives. My mother’s perplexity increases.
My father follows by bus, then holds me, briefly,
in a room full of squalling cots. Back home
he can’t get near the baby for women,
goes out. Neruda sips whisky on the verandah,
waiting, waiting. Sunday morning tiptoes in
over Manor Park. Ducks forage behind iron railings.
At the very least it is a new day.
Andrew Rudd (The Interpreter's House, October 2005)
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