Overhead aeroplanes;
ground level, street parties
and bunting. World War II
exhumed again. Our great
national myth.
The war was my childhood too;
playing in abandoned air raid shelter
at the bottom of our garden
on a summer’s afternoon
of hide and seek; knowing
instinctively that war’s ending
was sure and certain; never
would we be, like our parents,
evacuees and refugees.
My links died with my father.
He who remembered hearing
at seven years old
Neville Chamberlain announcing
“we are now at war with Germany”;
at twelve years old
watching sky full of planes
heading for Normandy's beaches;
at thirteen, in front of Buckingham Palace
cheering royals and Churchill.
He departed ten years ago
and with him the country.
Bring out your hollow drums,
cover up with brass bands,
now ravaged lands and lives,
while virtues and decency,
the code we lived by,
subject to money’s tyranny.
As once abolished poverty
creeps back and
poor children malnourished
are preyed upon,
warrior’s sacrifices cast aside
by corporate politicians
profaning the altars
of our remembrance;
welcoming fascists.
What remains of
the land I once
called home? My
parent’s ashes mingled
in death, as they once
lived the best of married
lives remain as perpetual
memorial in a ceremony
of stone.
Beyond them, I hear
gulls calling around
our sea-bound island;
one Zoom on a Sunday
afternoon returns us to
the lives built together;
our children yet to come
for whom I now pray
that they may find their way
past this tired history to
a new place; maybe like
that of the walled in anchoress
finding God in Black Death’s aftermath;
“all shall be well, and all shall be well,
all manner of things shall be well.”
A river of love moving through the land
which, though desolate, shan’t be abandoned.
© Phil Kemp 2025
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