Remembering Elby
His
brother’s friends would seldom have discovered
that two
sons had been born to Elby’s mother
no pictures
did he show of older brother
and proudly
he would indicate the others.
Poor Elby
had died long before his suicide.
The much
repeated stories of the family
excluded
any references to Elby
as though
their brother were a shameful memory
quite
consciously abolished from their history.
Poor Elby
had died long before his suicide.
Paternal
identity seemed a family shame
entombed in
the ignominy of Elby’s name.
His mother
married and his siblings changed their name
but Elby
was rejected as though he were to blame.
Poor Elby
had died long before his suicide.
Misfit and
outcast, dispatched to institutions
abandoned
to a life of social destitution
with rare
invitations from family relations
there’s
nought to lose or gain he felt upon reflection.
Poor Elby
had died long before his suicide.
A
settlement they shared as though to seal a pact
that the
truth of Elby’s life and the cause of his last act
would be
bottled up in secrecy and abandoned to the tide.
Poor Elby
had died long before his suicide.
The loss of
a child his mother once declared
was a
tragedy she was thankful to say she had been spared.
Unremembered
he had vanished along with the tide.
Poor Elby
had died way long before his suicide.
