It is easy to think of the current pandemic as an enemy, and much of the rhetoric of our leaders has centred on words like “invasion”, “fight”, “struggle”, “foreign” and the like, with Trump (of course) being the most naturally xenophobic, racist and unreasonable in his characterization of the virus.  He is the most belligerent and bellicose, missing (of course) the irony inherent in his being someone who ducked military service in Viet Nam though the fictional ‘bone spurs’ – when he had the opportunity to demonstrate his ‘real’ militarism, he chickened out.  It is characteristic of the coward that he is, that his previous ‘war’ was on undocumented immigrants, and of course the Mexican ‘rapists’, ‘murderers’ and ‘drug dealers’.  A war conducted, as all his ‘wars’ are from the safety of the White House and the golf course.

     In my case Conscription ended in 1960, when I was ten, and Harold Wilson did not take the UK into the Viet Nam War.  All other wars and skirmishes were dealt with by the regular army-  I could, as a charmed Baby Boomer, go through life with social silver spoon in my ever open mouth!  Or at least, given the circumstances of a person growing up in the UK nowadays, it certainly seems that the metaphor is not too far-fetched.

     The preparations and reactions to the virus by the governments around the world certainly put one in mind of armed conflict, indeed the Coward Trump has directly compared the (eventual) state of preparedness that his contemptable administration has been forced to accept is tantamount to War.

     As pronouncements are broadcast and ever more stringent positions are adopted to cope with the virus, it is difficult not to think in terms of General Mobilization.  

     The inspiration for this poem is directly stated in the opening stanza: it did cross my mind. And then the rest followed.

     I write from the point of view of a Baby Boomer born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II, and a being who began to take note of his surrounding and more importantly remember what he saw in about 1953/4.  When I was growing up in a suburb of Cardiff there were still ruins from the war in parts of the city; the war figured large in television and film; the war and its aftermath still defined who we thought that we were.  It took the Suez Crisis (that I do remember in my own child-centred way) to put us firmly in our ‘second-rank-and-falling’ state that has possibly culminated in the collective idiocy of Brexit.

     From the point of view of the generation now coming up to school leaving age (without doing their final exams?) my generation had a charmed way through life in Britain.

     My father was sporty (he captained the school rugby team when he was in the third form) and clever (he came top in his class in his grammar school – though that achievement was noted by his form teacher as, “Top out of a mediocre lot.  Reflects nothing of his ability, he’s slapdash, erratic and easy-going” to which my grandfather response after reading this assessment was, “That man know you!”) and when he should have gone to St Luke’s College to become a PE teacher he went into the RAF instead and eventually spent his war in Africa.  When he came back to this country he was in his twenties, his ‘college years’ gone.  He was one-year emergency trained as a teacher and he found himself a job.

     The differences between my father’s generation and my own are instructive.  My father’s brother was a Bren gun carrier who was ‘mopping up’ through Germany towards the end of the war: he didn’t talk much about his horrific experiences; my mother’s brother was deeply scarred by his experiences of being evacuated from France after Dunkirk, though towards the end of his life he was a witty raconteur about his absurd times in the army.  What did we Baby Boomers have to put beside this?  And what real threats had we had to contend with?

     I use an echo of the phrasing from a character in the BBC television series ‘Dad’s Army’ as the title for this poem because I wanted to bring in the sense of muddling unreality yet ultimate success that the series seemed to encapsulate, and I think that that attitude is now being applied to the virus: excitement tinged with pleasurable cinematic disaster-movie fear.

     The end of the poem asks a question.  To which I have no answer.

“Covid-19, Mr. Mainwaring, Sir!”

It crossed my mind

this virus is the war

we baby boomers

never had.

We missed conscription,

so, The War was second-hand

with scraps passed on

from first-hand sources in our homes.

Music, names and words and thoughts:

spivs, blackout, Vera Lynne, Dunkirk,

Black Market, Blitz, and rationing,

and mind my bike, put out the light!

No, that’s Othello, not a warden’s words.

And, that’s the point.

I went to college

at the age my dad went to the RAF.

Free milk before,

fees paid for then,

and job ahead

for we, we happy few –

and pension too.

But now, malign, omnivorous

(and our specific age group in its sights)

this virus comes to spoil the tale.

I once asked mum

if she had ever thought        

in darkest days of war

that we could face defeat?

“Not once!” she said.

Not once, in spite of all that

sleek, repulsive, Nazi chic

that seemed to ooze efficiency

against inept Dad’s Armoury!

Not once. 

A phrase of confidence and faith,

or blind delusion based on hope?

Or all of the above, and more?

And do I have to choose?

Back in Castelldefels after a visit to Cardiff.  Like my last visit to the city this was because of a death.  My last aunt died and I came to her memorial service to read two of my poems and to celebrate her life.
     I realise that this is not the first time that I have experienced the 'death' of a generation - my grandparents and great uncles and aunts died some time ago - but this time I sensed a real and personal loss.  Don't get me wrong, the death of my paternal grandmother was a crushing, catastrophic blow to my young self, and I felt, deeply, the deaths of my other grandparents, but uncles and aunts were the contemporaries of my parents and their loss was somehow more direct and appreciated as a 'loss' as well as a death.  I knew some of my uncles and aunts in a way that was not really possible with my grandparents.  I had conversations with my uncles and aunts that I could never have had with my grandparents.
     The final representative of that generation of uncles and aunts has gone and I added a poem to a sequence called The Visit that I wrote when I came to Cardiff and Newport on the occasion of the death of my father's younger brother's wife.  I don't mean to distance her by that description, but it gives a sense of the geography of family relationships in a genealogical sense.  The funeral memorial service that I attended this time was of my father's younger sister - who was 86 years old.
     We had had many interesting and stimulating conversations over the years, we shared an interest in art, music and literature and, in spite of her debilitating illness that limited her for decades she always managed a wry comment and an ironic smile when we met.
     Her loss was real.  On our last visit she told me, "You have your father's hands" - a simple statement, but one which gave me pause for thought and the inspiration for a poem.
     Having read the two poems which related to my aunt from The Visit in the Lady Chapel of Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, I felt that my aunt would have approved, and the process also helped me to come to terms with her death and the realization of the death of her generation of the family.
     The following poem is, at the title suggest, an epilogue to the events and my thoughts on the events of a closing chapter of my family.
     I am not sure that my poetry has become darker as I get older, but there is certainly an appreciation that my generation is the next in line!

Epilogue

“They    have    all    gone.”

That is the sort of phrase

where shifting emphasis

rewrites the sense

– and all of it applies.

So let’s just choose a metaphor,

and muse within the safety of a scene.

The final pilot’s boat has sailed

and all the coasts and continents

are left for us to chart alone –

            although, it’s right,

that our cartography

has used, as truth, throughout the years,

unauthorized and wild mistakes;

assumption-sucking hopes and fears;

while ignorance and certainty,

help firm the lines we draw and drew.

Sometimes we say (with a wry smile)

“Here there be dragons,”

or maintain a quiet

(dignified and dry)

while tapping spaces

intimating that there’s

nothing, much, to see.

Material?

Fragile.

Precarious.

On parchment, papyrus or paper sheet,

we gaze at inked-in places

dotted on our maps

(italic, bold, Times Roman strong)

unfolded in our smoothing hands

that dare not stretch the page too far

as ripping up such thin, slight plans

leave only tears to hide beside.

As I aways say (and really mean!) I welcome any comments on the poem, as I regard everything that I write as work in progress and am always open to suggestions!

SMR

This poem, like so many recent poems is a result of an evening session in Barcelona with the Poetry Group.  As the leader of the group is going back to California for the winter she first thought of having 'Departure' as the theme, but that we deemed too depressing so we responded to its opposite.
          As I have recently had a fairly significant birthday, my mind was drawn, during the meditation part of the evening to thinking about the form that the Pensions people have sent me (26 pages long) which, in one section asks the applicant/claimant to list all the addresses at which he has lived!  Which, if nothing else gave me the opportunity to use a punning title!
          It was this systematic re-visiting that gave a focus to my thoughts and in the poem I drafted I linked form filling and the going back over a life.  It was almost like a variant on, "A History of the World in 100 Objects" re-written as "A History of SMR in X Addresses."  And that X is appropriate because I have only lived in about ten addresses in my life!  Which seems remarkable in some ways.
          It is not surprising that the address that stands out for me is that of my childhood home, the first house that I can remember clearly - though the elements that I brought back to mind in the poem came as something of a shock.
          I'm not sure, to be frank that the part about the May tree actually fits with what I thought that I was going to say, but I am prepared to give the ideas some time to settle down to see if they will make sense eventually.  I think that there are ideas of innocence and experience; belief and superstition, rejection and society somewhere in it all, but it will take me further time to discover what I think I might have said!
          As always any comments will be very gratefully received.

Returns

Form-filling . . . so prosaic.

But I’ve now reached the age where

Section 10 (and further space if needed)

must be filled with each and every

place in which I’ve lived.

And so I’ve packaged to and fro

with evidence from off-white

envelopes that capture

my first land-locked house –

an empty space in memory –

to Spain, and by the sea, today.

And, of them all,

the Cardiff house

in Dogfield Street, Cathays

(odd names) becomes the one

that claims most visits

from my mind.  Because

there was a time when

corner shops were where

they ought to be; and

counters were too high to

overlook;  and butter, loose,

was bought by weight

with cars, odd interruptions

on the empty streets.

And in the other corner

(looking back through

walls) the brick-beds fill

with marigolds; nasturtiums

play at senses with the sweet

repulsion of the May trees’

urgent scent. 

                       I once made up

a posy of the blossom and

was hurt by my small gift’s

rejection, and did not understand,

‘Not in the house!’

I gaze at distant views

where I still try

to find again, something,

I didn’t think, I’d ever lose.

But, my feet drag with

years, and I’m

always too slow

discovering, again

what I know

isn’t there.

With this topic members of the group were more eager to explain what they were thinking about, rather than share any poetic attempts, and the discussion about the raw material that came to the surface in this sort of exercise was very revealing.