quite visceral for this (ex) nzer
the men's secret business side of it
i can see that family so clearly - hear the sound of their voices

cheers - jen

----Original Message Follows----
From: cooee <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: memory snap of 1956
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 15:05:05 +1000

Shower Parade
   (conscription, Auckland, 1956)


The eighteen-year-olds that summer
did Œbasic¹ weeks at Papakura
accepting drill and discipline -
their army boots soon broken in,
their lemon squeezer hats a joke,
old weaponry that often broke,
the quantities of food immense,
torpor mid-afternoon intense.

Bayonet drill was on unless
you¹d failed to pass the swimming test.
He and three other duffers swam
ineptly all summer long.
At five p.m. the bugle played -
loud shouts: Œall out for dangle parade¹.
Towels tied around their waists,
soap and face-cloth in their fists,
they shuffled off, his company,
singing some marching melody,
to words of obscene parody.
(ŒBullshit was all the band could play...¹)

The shed with showers in was long -
no cubicles for lurking in -
Her Majesty¹s conscripted privates,
exposing themselves to each other -
twenty - thirty -  barged in to lather
yelling and splashing all together,
exit-ing to the painful shocks
of towels flicked at balls and cocks.

Too public - he would lurk behind,
showering last of all his kind.
Last in the mess queue after that,
a Penguin Classic in his hand,
and slow to eat, preferring chat.
One other soldier also read,
and even poetry was shared
(where¹s Tony now? - the things he said
showed that he¹d lived as well as read).

Kiwi youth in ¹56 ate
silently at a speedy rate,
and immediately vanished
in search of pool or table tennis.

Weekend leave - a short train ride -
a chance to see one¹s Mum and Dad,
and Sunday night report back
with laundered clothes, and fruit cake.
Morning bugle in the barracks
brings a teasing bunkroom chorus:
Œhands off cocks, feet in socks.¹

The tales some tell of girls in town
are disbelieved, envied, learned from.
The country lads know what to say
to have girls let them have their way -
those girls who speak like them. He blinks
to think how quick they click. Two winks -
two grins - straight down into Grafton
Cemetery, to let themselves be shafted.

Or are the tame lads being teased?
He keeps his mouth shut, quietly pleased
that Sunday next, sweet lovely Liz,
whose awesome father works with his -
men in tailored three-piece suits -
is having him to dine with them,
and afterwards some time alone.

With shiny boots and a few flowers
presents himself at their grand house.
His army pants expose his ankles
(her smiling note of this long rankles),
his table manners half way between
mess-hall ones and theirs (Œre-feened¹),
their talk of art - Europe¹s, England¹s -
considerate of his ignorance.
One day he¹ll get there and maybe
will use their tips on art and Abbey.

Her parents now withdraw discreetly,
Liz brings two coffees, poses sweetly
on the vast hearth-rug, white, woolly;
cinematic is her beauty,
an English sort of delicacy,
as if doomed for heart-break and TB.

God, she knows, made sexual love
a sacred force - heavens above,
what if it¹s profaned? - that¹s lust -
civilization might go bust.
Hold on tight or else tomorrow
Auckland may follow Gomorrah.

(Sodom her family never mentions -
the very word makes good folk anxious,
siding with the Marquess of Queensberry
against Oscar Wilde and his Salomé,
and Lawrence¹s Lady Chatterley -
unreadable, don¹t waste your money.
And films these days! You have to be
grateful for New Zealand censorship
smiting smut-peddlers thigh and hip.)

The lad in size ten boots and khaki
finds words elude him, his voice husky,
and hearth-rug moves all gaucherie.
The evening¹s opportunity
dies at their gate with pecked cheek,
a promise to write, a gift of cake,
a dash to catch the last train back -
all bored eighteen-year-olds - some drunk.
He clomps between the rows of huts,
clomps the floorboards to his bunk.

Soon the wake-up chorus rocks:
'hands off cocks, feet in socks.¹


Max Richards
Doncaster, Vic., Australia

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