Drafts - Nora Bomford

Waking to darkness; early silence broken
By seagull’s cried, and something undefined
And far away. Through senses half-awoken,
A vague enquiry drifts into one’s mind.
What’s happening? Down the hill a movement quickens
And leaps to recognition round the turning – 
Then one’s heart wakes, and grasps the fact, and sickens –
‘Are we down-hearted’…’Keep the home fires burning’.
They go to God-knows-where, with songs of Blighty,
While I’m in bed, and ribbons in my nightie.

Sex, nothing more, constituent no greater
Than those which make an eyebrow’s slant or fall,
In origin, sheet accident, which, later,
Decided the biggest difference of all.
And, through a war, involves the chance of death
Against a life of physical normality –
So dreadfully safe! O, damn the shibboleth
Of sec! God knows we’ve equal personality,
Why should men face the dark while women stay
To live and laugh and meet the sun each day?

They’ve gone. The drumming escort throbs the distance,
And down the hill the seagulls’ cried are rife,
And clamorous. But in their shrill persistence 
I think they’re telling me – ‘We’re all one Life’.
As much one life as when we flamed together,
As linked, as indivisible, as then;
When nothing’s separate, does it matter whether
We live as women or die as men?
Or swoop as seagulls? Everything is part
Of one supreme intent, the deathless heart.

Nora Bomford