Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, POST OFFICE ETCHINGS: 8. POSTAL INVESTIGATOR (B), by AUSTIN PHILIPS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POST OFFICE ETCHINGS: 8. POSTAL INVESTIGATOR (B), by                    
First Line: Draper's assistant. Doomed to be
Last Line: To her in anglesey.
Subject(s): Labor & Laborers; Letters; Postal Service; Work; Workers; Postmen; Post Office; Mail; Mailmen


DRAPER'S assistant. Doomed to be
By Venus' ill attaint.
Receives dismissal. All alone
In London. Low and faint,
He yearns
For friend. Instinctive, turns
To one
He knew within the pales
Of his own island—Anglesey—
When schoolboy in Wild Wales.

The friend responds by gen'rous share
Of bed with broken man,
Who walks the callous town in vain,
Seeking for work. Then can
Endure
His wretched state no more.
Is fain
For Home. Decides to rook
His host. So, frantic, forges fare
From Postal Savings Book.

The robbed—resentful, wrathful—writes
Reproach to Ministry,
Which sends me to investigate
In island Anglesey.
I hear
The boy confess and bear
His fate
With fortitude. One thing
Alone, in this black hour, affrights
Him ... mother's suffering.

He bids me tell her. Lump in throat,
I find her baking bread:
A simple peasant, who has striven
With single-minded heed,
To live
For this her son, and give
(Now riven
Alike, life, world, long plan!)
Her all, to place him in black coat
And make him 'gentleman'.

I break the news. Her bright blue eyes,
Enmeshed mid criss-cross lines,
Fill fast with tears. She trembles. Yet,
Superb, her spirit shines.
She stands
On tip-toe. Her flour'd hands
Are set
Upon my cheeks. While she—
Wracked by God knows what agonies—
Says: "Send him back to me!"

Scarcely one cruel month gone by,
The exile takes his stand
In the Old Bailey dock. I hear
His Counsel, brilliant, bland,
Begin
To plead for mercy. Win
Austere
Recorder's sympathy,
And boy bid back, at kind command,
To her in Anglesey.





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