Bomb Site

i.   1954

Either mistaken half a mile off target

from the blacked-out Mersey docks,

  

or off-loaded onto with full apologies

on the way back to the Fatherland,

  

it was a hovering void still faintly

overhung with the miasma of loss - 

 

but still a house, despite its toppled

gate-posts, draughty entrance-hall,

 

open-plan rooms either side, scatterings

of deco tiles from where the kitchen was.

   

To think living took place there once, 

all traces being long since levelled off,

 

where boys in worsted shorts

crouched, and killed sixpenny baddies,

while neighbours in rooms remembered 

less and less as rationing came to an end at last.

ii.   2014

Still a withered hand sticking up,

curtain ring on wedding finger,

tatter of speckled hem of girl's dress

snagged on stump of gas pipe,

charred scraps of a Liverpool Echo

dated  ept mb r 1 41.

                                          

Next door

the exhausted hotel stares,

tired of surviving,

its willow drooping over the wall

like a dribbling fountain

weeping gobbets of grief

into stagnant pools,

where swarms of sassy frogs do skinny-dips,

all pretending to be the same,

and going glug in rainbow slicks,

hearts all throbbing and throbbing

like motorbikes on heat.

Small boys could take them home,

have little epiphanies with rampant cats,

but not Earnshaw, Riley or Reid,                                   

all gone, all bloody well gone,

there's only me left,

mucking around with this.

.

Reviews

[NotUsinganymore]

Very interesting concept. History changes a lot and only memories can make you remember what your old home use to be like. I never ever want to go back to my country even if it changes to be a better place. There's still a lot of hurt in my country.

[Gerald Parker]

Sorry, I didn't spot that you had reviewed this poem. Yes, there are so many war-damaged places in the world. I can understand your not wanting to return. It took a long time but the UK did eventually recover, strangely not as well as the defeated. Thanks for reading my two-part poem. The second part is a send-up though with a sad bit at the end.

[NotUsinganymore]

It's okay. c: I am glad your country recovered.