Sydney Tremayne ‘Refugees’ 1948

I posted this in 2017 with its critical note. The context was different then, and the note was concerned with other things. It is the outstanding poem in the collection – and in the current context of refugees from Ukraine, and the slow response to them by the government of the UK gains added relevance.

Refugees

Sydney Tremayne

There is one thing that matters,

only one thing that matters,

but I can’t remember what

for my wits are refugees

overloaded with bundles

dragging a dead time’s keepsakes,

bank book, birth certificates,

insurance policy, deeds,

proofs of dead identity,

contract with security,

receipts for outdated hates.

My wits are overburdened

with keys to demolished codes

no longer abodes but stones

with which little noted lanes

will be hardened and widened

into arterial roads.

Meanwhile they wander dully

in unfamiliar country

unkempt, dispersed, defeated,

cheated of will’s coherence,

now bit by bit discarding

treasures of no importance.

But there is one thing that matters.

There was one thing that mattered

though the world shatter wholly.

How can the whole be shattered?

How can the shattered be whole?

I talk like a fool. One talks

to be companionable.

It is laughable, really,

but I am weary, forget,

and strife has picked reason’s locks

and burgled the store. No more

shall we arrange the trim lore,

pour out the warming wisdom

and hand it around. Sugar?

No, that doesn’t matter. But

there was something that mattered,

something I must remember

more important than saws. Look,

there is sunlight again. See

how the whole world glows. Trees’ bare

bark sparkles and shows life, like

the plumage of birds. More words!

Whole world! World whole!

Whole world well,

Hey ding-a-ding-ding,

As seen from a shell hole in the spring

And broken trees bring images

Of birds with shimmering plumages

Not stuffed but on the wing.

What was I rummaging for?

Something must not be damaged,

something of great importance

and I wonder what it was.

From Sydney Tremayne ‘Time and the Wind’ Collins (1948) p.53