2022-05-14

 THE DAY HELEN WAS BORN


 


He woke up splendid but then the air turned haze. Westow Croft Maternity in North Yorkshire was an old mansion that had served as a blood hospital during the war. Few know of the strength and suffering of the English people during that fight when the Germans bombed the entire county. It was a Victorian building surrounded by pine trees behind a cemetery. I went in the early hours of the morning and they didn't let me in:


—Your wife is in labor


My wife had been transferred in an ambulance at dawn and I hitchhiked to York and from there I moved to the town on a barren called “moors” where the wind blows hard. I was very nervous and I amused myself taking walks around the place, there was not a soul, I entered the cemetery. I remember well there was a recent burial of a twenty year old girl. The flowers and the mortuary wreath were fresh and the disturbed earth was piled up in a mound. I took out the rosary that I always carry with me and prayed the five mysteries for that unknown young woman who had just been buried precisely when my daughter was about to be born. It was a slow and difficult birth. Suzanne was given chloroform, no epidural. In the 1970s, English gynecology was still in its infancy and seemed very primitive to me. All day I entertained myself absorbed in my thoughts. Finally, at half past nine at night, precisely at that time I had come into the world twenty-six years ago, my first daughter arrived in this valley of tears; I still can't get rid of that impression. Suzanne was tired but she gave me a smile with her gay green eyes, she was a beautiful woman the most beautiful in England and she squeezed my hand. And I told her: “Well done Zanny you are a heroine”. Shortly after, Dr. Isherwood, brother of the famous English poet of the 1930s, approached and shook my hand:


 —Mister Parra you have a beautiful daughter.


—Thank you Sir, She is going to be beautiful. We'll call her Helen the shining one.


Isherwood was Pocklington's doctor, he always had a leather briefcase in his hand and a smile on his lips, the stethoscope hanging from his chest. He was the classic English doctor with good bed side manners.


Suzanne's mother and I took a taxi back to Wilberfoss. My poor mother-in-law from whom my wife had inherited her beauty was a bundle of nerves. I think we celebrated the arrival of my firstborn with half a pint of ale me and a babysham ni mother-in-law, it was twelve o'clock at night when we entered our house in Wilberfoss. There was still light in the sky. The limelight the interlubrican of the northern hemisphere. Helen wanted to be born when the days are the longest of the year. Waiting for the midnight sun. The nerves, the love and the longing of that day have not passed me yet. It took me a while to sleep and I wrote this poem


 


WESTOWCROFT CEMETERY


 


Some come and others go, that's how life rolls on and on


Nobody remembers you deceased buried here but I murmur a prayer for your soul when my daughter is going to be born


You sleep there in the churchyard behind the Norman tower of the church


Rest because you are promises under the grass


Of a new life that begins


I can comfort you by saying that there is no death


Vita mutatur non tollitur

Life changes, it doesn't take away


the resurrection will come


sleep and rest


waiting for your arrival


christ will come


The wells of dawn will frolic in the cove


You will hear the cricket sing


in the interregnums


They are secret documents that my Faith has revealed to me


You are dead in hope


 


 


 


HELEN OLIVIA ISABEL JOANA


 


 


Go with such names to life


daughter of my entrails


To the joy of living from suffering, and suffering


Elena the resplendent


Olivia olive branch


what peace you brought us


Fruit of our love and our blood


You were given to us by God


meat of my meat


crying of my crying


Life of my life


that you made more beautiful


 


SAINT JOHN OF BEVERLEY BISHOP AND MARTYR


 


I am dark night


 trafago of my books christmas eve that returns once more


The short and cold nights of Santa Lucia


I hear the bells from the tower of Beverly Cathedral


And the sounds chime your name


That when pronouncing it, the pitchers of happiness of the Danaides are filled


It was the glory of being you


And your image of that girl's photo


Playing with the sand on a Welsh beach


that I carried in my wallet


distant, think,


next feel


Well in love never dies


It is one and indivisible


the smoke from my pipe


Go up to the porches of my room


This little cell where I take refuge


With writing message


I play chess with words


I despair and I get excited


I run away. I cry and shut up


Quiet is the night


An angel next to me smoked


A cigarette


It is comforting to feel the beating of its wings


When it was


He left never to return


And she left on her

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