Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2025
Silenced mother tongues whisper back, poems by Linda Adair.
Photograph of Linda Adair by Brendan Bonsac.
Silenced mother tongues whisper back
Máire’s mathair Ellen wore jet-black
mourning brooches of braided hair
a crucifix recovered from a French field
like medals of maternal sacrifice of
weans lost to war pestilence calumny
and the Crown.
She forbade her brood to speak
Gaeilge — the Old People’s language
that the charming fiddle player
bantered with her girlish heart
before they wed and raised twelve children
until a bushfire took their last baby and all hope
Later the deserted mother urged her daughters
to make ‘good marriages’
conceal their Irish heritage
become a Mrs Initial Capital, British Surname:
your life and your children’s lives will be easier than mine if you do
most of the girls took their Mam’s advice
rarely thinking and never speaking Gaeilge in public
only the older Máire remembered fragments
from her morai – the grandmother who’d travelled
from Roscommon to Sydney in search of a new life
skerricks of information recounted
sometimes over a pot of strong tae agus siucra
with her inions (daughters)
and garinion (granddaughter)
tales of habit and superstition
trickled down the generations
– believing ‘pearls were for tears’
pouring a cupán tae to read the leaves
knowing you may be abused if you wore green
my rebellious Nanna, Máire named her first-born
in honour of St Theresa but also adopted
a fictional Irish girl of good character’s name
and now I carry that heroine’s name.
After a lifetime immersed in the English Canon
I now actively listen for the whispered voices
of the generations of women before me
who were silenced, othered, even outlawed
then sent here to serve empire’s colonial project
‘to populate or perish’ the Stolen Wealth
that has never been ceded nor had a treaty signed.
As long as Australia keeps the ‘Butcher’s Apron’
in the flag, daily tiny woundings will continue
to cut out the mother tongues whether they are
from Eire or Indigenous to Country
or any latter group of people seeking a home
the linguafranca of my comfort zone
is a site of contest between
lives lost in transportation and languages suppressed
in the service of assimilation and endless wealth for some
glamourised as ‘civilisation’ and common sense.
Excerpt from The Honour Roll Cards
Beneath a framed Jesus of the Sacred Heart
two women exchange a look of infinite sadness
Christ gazes with unseeing compassion
into the chiascuro setting
warm yellow light from the lamp on the cedar table
contrasting the cool sepia portraits
of two young men in uniform
photographed heroes before they sailed.
Within the lamp light’s glow
two small envelopes addressed to Mrs Murphy
postmarked the Australian Imperial Force
sit unopened alongside a quill pen, a bottle of ink,
and a blotter — paltry defences against
the dispassionate bureaucracy of the Imperial War Office.
Ellen wears mourning dress like a second skin
ever since that jet-black horse-drawn hearse
made its way along the main street
of another town came out to pay their respects as
two infant grandchildren were taken to rest
in their other grandmother’s grand marble grave
their names elegantly enscribed on the cold white pediment —
the shades of black have intensified with each ensuing loss.
Her upright posture belying the load etched on her face
she sits on one of the spindle-back chairs watching
her youngest daughter’s delicate pale hands
reach out from the shadows to set
two Willow Pattern cups and saucers
and place the tea tray down on the small square table.
She wishes she had a bottle of brandy
the nerves could do with a steady
but this house has long been
a refuge from ‘the grog’ and the horses
well at least after Tom left her.
The Honour Roll cards II
Ellen picks up the first envelope
tears it open with suppressed rage
then slowly places the card
on the cedar table
Cecily dips the nib into the ink bottle
and offers it to her mother
inviting her to say
what should — but never can — be said.
Ellen recoils from the pen
as if it were a bayonet
aimed at her womb
another kind of death awaits
simple words that will order
reality once completed.
Amorphous grief will solidify
from personal burden to immutable public fact
such words mark a boundary
a surrender of maternal hope
that her two boys will again walk
mud through the back door
hungry for a roast lamb dinner.
Charles resembled a lead actor in a silent film
standing 6 foot 2 inches tall with black hair and eyes
handsome and seemingly invincible
Allan was less striking but academically gifted
his blue eyes twinkling with bravado
as underage he enlisted at the call up
with a group of rowdy mates
The tears well up behind her glasses
she begs off
Cecily your handwriting is much neater than mine
will you be scribe please — I’ll just sign it.
Wolga
(Clematis aristata – the climber that gave the Wolgan Valley its name)
The Wolgan Valley
enclosed by high cliff walls
a green, bottle enclave
invaded by Europeans
to graze cattle and sheep
our wild west story
untold and unconsidered
damage that meant
a carelessly thrown cigarette
made a river burn
Newnes is a parable
a myopic example
of fossil fuel
dependency on one product
the world no longer wanted
(Sound familiar? Sound like coal?)
Before 1825
wolga vine grew lushly
in the safe valley
there Traditional Owners
may have sheltered from the brutal Bathurst Wars
The Wiradjuri pathway in
— renamed ‘Donkey Steps’
as livestock took hold
trampled the rich valley floor
for the Lord of Capertee.
Now shale oil ruins
the over-capitalised folly
of a media baron of his day
doomed relics of greed only
remain of your childhood world.
© Linda Adair
Linda Adair is a poet, publisher & co-editor of https://rochfordstreetreview.com living on Darug and Gundungarra Country. In 2020 Melbourne Poets Union published her debut book The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering. Her poems has been anthologised in several volumes, and various journals both in print and digitally locally and internationally. She is currently working on a verse memoir of the women in her family.