Everything Changes 
Goiás Velho, Brazil (for Terezinha Pereira da Silva)

We leave early, drive for two and a half hours,
park, find the church where you were married.
Later, in town, an information officer listens,
searches assiduously through the archives,
scans names and dates, but in vain.

It isn’t there, the entry we are hoping for,
the one you need to find your lost family.
He closes the last book, says he’s sorry.
We discuss alternatives – he wonders
if the records might have been transferred.

We set off in hope again, for the state capital,
park behind the cathedral at midday, walk
the rough stone slabs of colonial streets,
hot sun, cool shade. We lunch in the square,
then find the Records Office – closed until two.

Patiently, we wait. Two o’clock, two-twenty.
Stillness, silence – the minutes crawl by.
History all around, but yours still out of reach.
We start to think something’s gone wrong.
Two-thirty. Locked shutters, locked door.

Suddenly a car arrives, a woman, keys in hand,
the door’s open, the shutters too, we are in,
soft penumbra. We explain at the counter,
the woman pays attention, turns, picks out
one large grey ledger from a row on a shelf.

She places it on the balcony – upside down
to us. We watch her turning the pages,
her finger checking columns. She stops,
reads out names. ‘Yes!’ you say ‘yes, yes!’
In those few seconds, everything changes.

A photocopier whirs into life and we pay.
Outside we sit on a low wall in the shade,
under the jacaranda trees. There, in writing,
the words we are seeking. Through tears
you say them: your grandparents’ names.

Philip Dunkerley does poetry in and around South Lincolnshire. Somehow more than 150 of his poems have jinked their way past editors and appeared in magazines and webzines. On bad days he is infected by words.