Jennifer Compton: Two Poems

The One Day of the Year

‘The One Day of the Year’ is an Australian play by Alan Seymour

written in 1958 about Anzac Day

I saw my husband-to-be in this play in New Zealand

when I was 14.

It was on at the Concert Chamber in the Town Hall

and he played Hughie Cook.

As he reached up to turn off the light on his bedside table

so he could pash Jan

I had the strangest thrill.

I wanted a man (him) to reach for the darkness so he could

discover me. (And so he did.)

If it hadn’t been for his world famous programme collection

—   “Were you in that play? That was you?” —

years into our marriage

the penny may not have ever dropped.

(The strangest thrill of all.)

As for the play, well

it was about the men who had fought

embodied by men who hadn’t.

And I was numbed to the rhetoric

of Anzac Day

how it didn’t jibe with the old soldiers

stumbling and inchoate after the Dawn Service

on that one day of the year.

If they could get a grip on

your elbow at the bus stop

—   “Don’t go today!” Mum would say. “The men are out!” —

they breathed confusion into your face

the lost boy stark staring

all the words dying on their lips.

The row of medals on their lapel

would clank, would bring them back

and they would unhand you like dropping

something too heavy to hold.

Jennifer Compton

Over the Fence

Thinking Of The Call Out For The Anthology For Gallipoli

I Realise I Never Knowingly Met Any Of The Gents Who Were There

But I Knew Plenty Who Were Somewhere Else

So long ago. I was a little piping child.

I don’t remember how I got over the fence.

Great-Aunt Mary was mowing the lawn

— ratchet ratchet ratchet went the steampunk mower —

Great-Uncle Frank was collapsed like a marionette

legs in front (one of them not natural) and bent

to cough and gasp, grey in the face, a misery to himself.

(He was gassed.) (Dulce et decorum est.) (Now I twig.)

On this occasion, this one time, before he died young

he smiled at me. I shimmered up towards him

like a daisy that has learned to walk, and tapped

his unusual leg (trousers rolled up). “What’s this?”

I asked. “That’s where they took away my leg.”

“Why did they do that?” (A curious and trenchant

child.) And then the long, slow, five miles wide

smile of experience cherishing innocence.

Jennifer Compton