A Teenager in the War
My bedroom faced north, down to the river
where the subs that stopped the Evil Empire
were re-equipped, and nuclear.
When the dockyard shut, sending my father
onto the dole, I felt much better.
But London wasn’t a lifetime further:
could Chatham survive an attack on Westminster?
I’d become a living encyclopaedia
of megatons, danger-zones, the lying mass media,
but learning more made me feel more in danger.
How would I die? The once-off weather
bursting through the bits of ex-window
at hundreds and millions of miles an hour?
I checked our distance from the centre.
Would I live long enough to admire
the famous clouds? The horizon on fire?
I went to my aunt’s in Australia
and hoped it would happen while I was out there:
perhaps the planet’s winds would deter
the worst of it from the land Down Under?
Nope. I discovered Nuclear Winter
ten foot into the back-garden bunker.
Not till Gorbachev came to power
did I sleep all night. But a clap of thunder
or the TV blanking, or splitting the air,
jets, with their democratic terror
still stop the heart of a convoy-watcher.
The silos are there still, but undercover,
disarmingly quiet about their future
which is ours, set to make a career
across the reheated atmosphere.
There one goes! As it starts coming over
arcing the sky like the line on a welder
the missile spotters nudge one another.
Page(s) 47-48
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