Winter, 1947
When the junior hockey team
went up, my name in it,
I could hardly sleep. Next day
we woke to trees encased in glass,
dripping with crystals, ball games
gone for the duration, the harshest
winter since 1894.
In Berlin, they chopped up
furniture for fuel, ten marks bought
a box of matches, twenty-five
an egg. We didn’t know this
as we wore valleys toboggan-smooth,
dodged snowballs, filled daytime
dormitories with ‘flu-sick boys
who all got better.
Nationalisation didn’t make coal
flow faster to candlelit homes
where old folk died. Things were so bad
General Marshall came up with his plan.
We went home happily for holidays
to find our cricket bats, quite unaware
the Cold War had started.
Page(s) 61
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