LOWE SHU ON Poem by Hannah Lowe

He weighted codfish down with rocks of salt,
sold turning milk, half pounds of musty flour;
offered credit to the customers
he robbed, a yellowed ledger full of ticks
and angry crosses on the shop's back shelf.

Not a word from China all those years,
and in the seamy rooms of Barry Street,
he drank alone, or fanned a hand of cards
to play for company, or climbed the stairs
to toss his money where a dosed girl lay

but the ladies in the beauty parlour
put down their magazines when he walked by,
believed those slim bones made him gentle, tender,
not a man to slap and rope a child
or stab a counter with a gutting knife.

He had an inventory of wives he withered
in the country, their thirteen hungry children
strewn from Heartease Pond to Poor Man's Lane.
The smallest boy, a bed-wetter he gave
a dollar to and dumped, somehow survived.

The only photograph is of his body
in the lignum vitae box he saved for.
Suited, on his bed of emerald silk.
a daughter took it as a souvenir,
as proof at last, thank god, that he was dead.