THE OLD GREENWAYS

Before the Word there was no record of the past:

in washed out photographic evidence I see

(beyond a reasonable doubt) the features of a pre-Word me.

I try to empathise before these fading snaps

of cuddly monochrome – and try to say, ‘Oh, aren’t

I cute!’  Snub-nosed in bunny-ears or teetering towards

my future on uncertain legs: I cannot feel

a stirring of identity.

                                 First memory of mine –

word-based: a superannuated pram, still warm

from my last ride.  Some girls discover it and jam

me in.  I play the baby in my break-neck rush

to meet my later self.  They say, ‘Let’s take the short cut!’

The word stabs deep: what is this cut?  I look around:

short grass scythed down to sand in spots; beyond, the sea.

Or is that first?  Maybe my memories begin

in aching trudge over boiling tar above the beach.

I’ve lost the words I used but hear a whimpering tone,

feel arms stretch up, beseeching pity from unmoved grown-ups.

But mostly Bognor memories are bleak: cold stormy waves

beat the breakwaters, thrashing pebbles onto kelp –

‘You’re not the only pebble,’ someone says -, skies low

as Nurse’s forehead.  And walking past that first Greenways

I feel a hot surprise invade my thighs or in

the garden watch the big boys putting up a hut

with magic, nails and saws (to me, if I had known it, a Taj Mahal),

or stand astride concrete embankments and Hornby trains.

Inside I cannot go.  Amnesia’s locked those rooms –

except the one where we young boys would sleep

under a dark blue sky and silver paper stars.

One day I run away from home – that is from school.

My tricycle’s eating up the road.  My mother leaps

from a lorry’s running board.  The memory snaps.

An embrace?  A smack?  Complaint about what I’ve done

to her?

              In memory I never do return to that

sad white house.   

                             Another sequence from the film:

I’m in the House of God on hassocked knees and peek

between my fingers, hoping to catch Him unawares;

a cassocked priest walks by instead, creates a breeze

that stirs beeswax and incense of old prayers.  And then –

I’m five years old – I bump downstairs upon my bum

stark naked but for gas mask.  The scandal!  What

in heaven’s name will come of this mad kid? 

                                                                          Scene shifts:

the whooping cough of distant bombs on Portsmouth, calls

to put on dressing gowns.  Our shadows elongate

in torch-light down the stairs.  Excited, we take seats

in Greenways-bunker, enjoying biscuits, cocoa and

the lateness of the hour.

                                        The last of all those scenes:

as unchanging, fixed as life or death: the night before

evacuation we lie on mattresses pell-mell;

next day we’ll leave this place, the thudding breakers on

the beach, the old ennui of that far dream.