The day after your uncle turned three,
The world changed. Standing on Euston Station,
Another uncle in your grandma’s arms,
A siren’s wail, the war’s first sound,
Sent us hurrying underground.
The passengers stood serious and hushed.
A porter took the child, and we waited.
A false alert began the phoney war,
The year Yeats died, and the Beetle was born,
And Joyce sent Finnegan rejoicing at his Wake.
The wind came out and blew him in again,
Above that empty entrance hall,
Behind Euston’s blackened portico.
No Cerberus snarled at the gate. A siren
Spoke All Clear and left everything uncertain.
I remember the hush not the journey
To a house beside the sea, the high hedge,
Sirens again wailing, the nights beneath the stair,
Listening. Lead railings slowly disappeared
On lorries like the Berlin wall. A bomb
Fell on Seed Street near the station;
A plane flamed in mid-air, froze in my head
Like a slow dream. We waved torn fuselage,
Then ran from the hoarse, staccato shouts
Of a shell-shocked relic of another war.
I recall the lads who drowned a cat
In a water-tank on our gang’s field,
Where we threw stones, built fires,
Dug up the grocer’s kitten,
Feeling suddenly less invulnerable.
Why should I strew these débris round?
Nights of football in the street,
A family play on the radio, a war
So very near, so very long ago?
Will they shore me ’gainst my ruin?
They may invite my daughters read a page,
Retrieve their father’s childhood
At their children’s age.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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