Helen, 1942
Apr. 22nd, 2011 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessMore National Poetry Month.
*************
Like many people, I had a crazy – genuinely crazy – great aunt, and like many of these aunts, she had a story.
She was not actually my great aunt, but my great great aunt, my great grandmother's sister, who at some point in the 1920s had coolly announced, without any notice whatsoever, that she was heading off to be a missionary in China. According to family legend this went badly, with no one understanding or supporting either the missionary or the China part. My grandmother thought that it might have been to exorcise some guilt over the death of another sister, who had died at the age of ten, or perhaps to step out from under the shadow of more talented brothers and sisters. I don't know. In any case, off to China she went, there to work at a mission and pick up a set of china, which happens to be in the house now. It looks to me like pretty cheap stuff, mass produced in the 1930s, but the family took great pride in it – "This china is real China –" and I'm hoping to have it out and cleaned up for occasional tea use by the end of the year because it looks pretty cool and colorful and the tea cups are the delightfully correct size.
Anyway. Things apparently went well enough until the Japanese invasion, where things went haywire. Various family accounts survive, with the general consensus that everyone begged the aunt to leave, like, now. Helen did not leave, not quite yet. Family legend disagrees about why – aunt Ruth, who was in no position to actually know, said that Helen had already lost her mind, and the other aunt Ruth*, also in no position to actually know, said that Helen was completely sane, just hated the rest of the family and didn't want to see them.
But she did flee the communists when they arrived to her part of China, and ended up fleeing China and trying to return back to the United States in the middle of World War II, in about the worst possible time to attempt to cross the Pacific. According to one story, she didn't actually try to cross the Pacific – instead, she went the other way around, across the Indian Ocean and around the edge of Africa and across the Atlantic which honestly could not have been much easier.
Whichever route she took, at some point, she and her shipmates saw a ship burning on the ocean. She told my mother this, saying it was one of the things she most remembered about the war. My mother told me, and the story lingered in my mind.
Once permanently back in the States – she did want to return, but encountered problems with communists – she did lose her mind completely to a seeming combination of dementia and paranoid schizophrenia. She spent the last years of her life convinced that the communists were stalking South Florida in search of her and trying to kill her, and alarmed various people by suddenly shouting "COMMUNIST" or accusing various people of being Chinese spies, and on a few exciting occasions mistaking Cuban exiles for Chinese Communists, which went very badly indeed. She was eventually institutionalized in Dania, in a place that, she told my grandmother, harbored Chinese spies everywhere (no one else appears to agree.) I apparently met her from time to time – we have photos – but despite these stories, she seems to have made no impression upon me whatsoever; I remember her sister, but not her, even though the pictures show all three of us, with me looking sulky and miserable.
Eventually this all simmered into a poem. I was never entirely satisfied with it, but I did send it out, and it was actually accepted for publication at two different journals who both folded before publication (the story of much of my writing career), at which point I decided that it was kinda cursed and withdrew it from circulation, although I've shared it with friends here and there.
Helen, 1942
On the night that she watched a dark ship burn
she chanted soft psalms, prayed words might atone
for lessons of God so hard to unlearn.
So simple it seemed: a lengthy sojourn
to grant the Gospel to orphans and crones.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she breathed plum blossoms. She had never yearned
for peace, but held it, and taught in soft tones
the lessons of God so hard to unlearn
until the invasion, when guns more stern
than even prayers, turned hymns into moans.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she heard the screams, from this war so modern
soldiers raped orphans. She watched it alone.
The lessons of God so hard to unlearn
first kept her from moving; she did not turn
as children screamed, but lay stiff and prone.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she stood silent. But here, she could kill, learn
what pulled screams into hymns, with one quick stone.
But lessons of God so hard to unlearn
made her knees collapse. She could not discern
orphan from killer. She fell, stone unthrown
and fled to the sea where the dark ship burned.
She remembered the screaming, her prayers spurned
as her church was filled with ash-darkened bones
the lessons of God so hard to unlearn
on the night that she watched a dark ship burn.
*************
Like many people, I had a crazy – genuinely crazy – great aunt, and like many of these aunts, she had a story.
She was not actually my great aunt, but my great great aunt, my great grandmother's sister, who at some point in the 1920s had coolly announced, without any notice whatsoever, that she was heading off to be a missionary in China. According to family legend this went badly, with no one understanding or supporting either the missionary or the China part. My grandmother thought that it might have been to exorcise some guilt over the death of another sister, who had died at the age of ten, or perhaps to step out from under the shadow of more talented brothers and sisters. I don't know. In any case, off to China she went, there to work at a mission and pick up a set of china, which happens to be in the house now. It looks to me like pretty cheap stuff, mass produced in the 1930s, but the family took great pride in it – "This china is real China –" and I'm hoping to have it out and cleaned up for occasional tea use by the end of the year because it looks pretty cool and colorful and the tea cups are the delightfully correct size.
Anyway. Things apparently went well enough until the Japanese invasion, where things went haywire. Various family accounts survive, with the general consensus that everyone begged the aunt to leave, like, now. Helen did not leave, not quite yet. Family legend disagrees about why – aunt Ruth, who was in no position to actually know, said that Helen had already lost her mind, and the other aunt Ruth*, also in no position to actually know, said that Helen was completely sane, just hated the rest of the family and didn't want to see them.
But she did flee the communists when they arrived to her part of China, and ended up fleeing China and trying to return back to the United States in the middle of World War II, in about the worst possible time to attempt to cross the Pacific. According to one story, she didn't actually try to cross the Pacific – instead, she went the other way around, across the Indian Ocean and around the edge of Africa and across the Atlantic which honestly could not have been much easier.
Whichever route she took, at some point, she and her shipmates saw a ship burning on the ocean. She told my mother this, saying it was one of the things she most remembered about the war. My mother told me, and the story lingered in my mind.
Once permanently back in the States – she did want to return, but encountered problems with communists – she did lose her mind completely to a seeming combination of dementia and paranoid schizophrenia. She spent the last years of her life convinced that the communists were stalking South Florida in search of her and trying to kill her, and alarmed various people by suddenly shouting "COMMUNIST" or accusing various people of being Chinese spies, and on a few exciting occasions mistaking Cuban exiles for Chinese Communists, which went very badly indeed. She was eventually institutionalized in Dania, in a place that, she told my grandmother, harbored Chinese spies everywhere (no one else appears to agree.) I apparently met her from time to time – we have photos – but despite these stories, she seems to have made no impression upon me whatsoever; I remember her sister, but not her, even though the pictures show all three of us, with me looking sulky and miserable.
Eventually this all simmered into a poem. I was never entirely satisfied with it, but I did send it out, and it was actually accepted for publication at two different journals who both folded before publication (the story of much of my writing career), at which point I decided that it was kinda cursed and withdrew it from circulation, although I've shared it with friends here and there.
Helen, 1942
On the night that she watched a dark ship burn
she chanted soft psalms, prayed words might atone
for lessons of God so hard to unlearn.
So simple it seemed: a lengthy sojourn
to grant the Gospel to orphans and crones.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she breathed plum blossoms. She had never yearned
for peace, but held it, and taught in soft tones
the lessons of God so hard to unlearn
until the invasion, when guns more stern
than even prayers, turned hymns into moans.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she heard the screams, from this war so modern
soldiers raped orphans. She watched it alone.
The lessons of God so hard to unlearn
first kept her from moving; she did not turn
as children screamed, but lay stiff and prone.
On the night that she watched the dark ship burn
she stood silent. But here, she could kill, learn
what pulled screams into hymns, with one quick stone.
But lessons of God so hard to unlearn
made her knees collapse. She could not discern
orphan from killer. She fell, stone unthrown
and fled to the sea where the dark ship burned.
She remembered the screaming, her prayers spurned
as her church was filled with ash-darkened bones
the lessons of God so hard to unlearn
on the night that she watched a dark ship burn.