For those who have never heard of it, IPECAC is Oil of Ipecacuanha BPC, which mothers in Victorian times and well into the 20th century, rubbed on to children's chests rather as in later years we had Vick Vapour Rub.
1951 – IPECAC
We came home from harvest, dangerously
wobbling on the high wagon down the village
astride the sheaves, the horses broad and brown
and home to tea.
I remember a small room
and in the small room a poem unborn
and a black kettle hissing on a black hob
and doors with latches like shed latches
the walls boards like the walls of sheds
Aladdin lamp on the table melting butter
and banging moths, while we
mused, sleepy, in our bright cocoon.
And that was home.
The Bible and a tin with cotton reels
washed up with flotsam round the vase of twigs
which one-day will explode their leaves from sticky buds
the wireless, and the eucalyptus in the bottle with the bulb
and let us not forget the cruse of oil
or the eardrops, or the accumulator for the wireless
our window on the world
or the bicycle lamps, the ipecac and the bicycle clips
for the bicyclists, the taste of hot dripping on hot toast
and the dog in the lamplight curled and warm.
And in the light, and by the firelight, steadfast, knitting,
knitting, Mother, not my mother, but she was my mother.
She made me her son, and I resented it.
She pulled me to her heart though I resisted it.
She rubbed my chest with ipecac.
She made my memories
as strange as old mythology.
