Some years ago I began a series of autobiographical poems. They were intended to track my early life from birth to teenage years. They were all to be constructed as vignettes arising from sequences, or simply moments, of memory, my own & those shared with me by parents. The series stalled after four poems & I have kept them as a self-contained set of brief depictions of that post-war time now locked firmly behind the1960s. The probability is that they have resonance only for me; that there's too little of the universal within these fragmented & highly specific flashes of memory.
1945: Emmanuel Road
Banded light, I should remember first,
from the bottle-green, ruby-red window.
Soused in colour, wordless, thought-free,
I kick air, anticipating dance;
beat palmless hands together,
finding rhythm. From another room,
through formless darkness, shellac hisses
introducing flaring brass:
Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw.
My parents foxtrot through my light, in love.
I sing the blues.
#
Dad and Monty had a decent war,
home-guarding Clapham Common,
listening for the 'cello hum
of bombers, the woodwind of incendiaries.
Crouching in the doorway
of the burned-out Coach and Horses,
they evaluate the midnight orchestras,
mark them out of ten, emerge,
pissed and applauding,
to the siren's lone soprano.
11:19:40 PM 
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