Graeme Hetherington: Two Poems

The King’s Friend
(for Edward VIII)

It is my task as friend to say

“Stay true to her and abdicate,

Don’t be the traitor-king they want!

My need to look up to a god‑

Like human on this earth is strong,

My expectations high and not

To be denied.” And when he chose

For love I cheered and loudly cried

“The worst is dead long live the best!”

Graeme Hetherington

Secrecy

(for Lindsay Gordon Skeggs-Hetherington)

My father’s need for secrecy

Emerged when he, descended from

Folk rumoured to be “convict-born”

Because they’d fetched up on the West

Coast of Tasmania near Hell’s Gates

As underground miners, began

To work his way clear from beneath

The bottom of the heap. It ranged

From his silence about the past

And trying to disguise the fact

That he had barely been to school

And found form-filling and the head‑

Lines of newspapers difficult,

To making sure I never saw

His member when he had a pee.

Evasiveness and furtiveness

Were reinforced by masonry,

His strict injunction not to read

The “little black book” he would take

To Lodge and then leave lying on

The mantelpiece or by the phone

To tease, and only were explained

More deeply on his death, which as

He’d wished was in a room alone:

His birth certificate the proof

That he’d suppressed the “staining” half

Of his surname, preferring to

Shed part of self instead of own

To kinship with a petty crook,

Who’d “done a runner” from his wife

And to this day remains untraced.

But as an amputated limb’s

Stump craves being scratched quiet, so he

Itched for the races, two-up, tarts,

Sharp business deals with “Craft” mates, cards,

As I in turn have loved low life.

Graeme Hetherington