Three by
Andrew Leggett
BOMB BOX BURIAL
It was 1917. To family on the farm at Kumbia, fragments of dispatches found their mark, scattered, as though from the shell that burst half a mile past Noreuil, scythe of the blood harvest.
‘I knew him,’ said Private M.J. Clair.
‘I knew him very well,’ came the message from Private J. Bourke, intimate as Hamlet, picking up a skull. ‘I saw him get killed with a shell at Bullecourt. Death was instantaneous … I do not know the place of burial’
‘R.F. Horton was killed by a shell. I picked him up and buried him at Noreuil, near Bullecourt, about April 17th,’ wrote Private Harry Sutcliffe from the Edmonton Military Hospital. What was left to bury, six days after death, of Great Uncle Frank, hit by a shell while carrying bombs?
‘He was buried alongside Noreuil Road,’ reported Corporal Craig, ‘about 20 yards in front of the village. I put up a cross made out of bomb box.’
The South Burnett Regional Council list him as reinterred at Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, but the monument tells another story: his name there is one of ten thousand men whose graves were never found.
KARELIAN MOURNING, 1944
In the days immediately
following midwinter,
Katya felt Ari’s absence
as a constricting band,
inhibiting her breath,
squeezing hope from her.
When little Salme died,
she wrapped the child
in ragged flannelette
printed with bluebirds
and carried her to the shed
to wait for burial in the thaw.
Katja stacked the corpse
on a shelf newly cleared
of the vodka bottles Ari
had taken to the front
to make Molotov cocktails
for the Russian trenches.
ASPEN
Today was the last day of the conference. Last night there was a gala dinner with the Latino community demonstrating traditional Aztec dancing. Some questioned the appropriateness of this cultural appropriation, although the native American and Latino communities had been consulted and were adamant they wanted to present. Then there was the traditional singing from each of the national groups. We Australians could not transcend our petulance about things nationalistic. We could not agree on anything. Despite appeals from the French, the Belgians, the English, the Israelis, the Germans, the Americans and others, we sang nothing. The Americans later roped me in to an a capella version of ‘Lord Won’t You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz’. I was glad to lend them my tenor, as I was short of a fiver and reluctant to invest even a dollar in my embarrassment at the Australian lack of grit. I managed this morning to risk breakfasting on fried chicken and waffles. I grew enough spine in the afternoon to take a short hike on the Enchanted Mesa Trail with my beloved after doing our laundry. When I tried to push, it was the altitude and not the scenery that left me breathless.
aspen late to turn
beyond the bend
the air is thinner
Andrew Leggett is an Australian author and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic papers, reviews and songs. His latest collection of poetry was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. He is an Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry. Andrew Leggett at ē·rā/tiō.