I come from a chalk-white,
sun-streaked street where skinny children
stick-rattle and hopscotch away
careless summer days.
I come from the domain
of bus drivers and bricklayers,
where ferret-keeping, earth-salty sorts
artfully tend their vegetables
and their kneeling house wives
with scrubbing brush and Vim
nag at the linoleum within.
I come from a bygone place
where dusty men
returning from a day’s work
cough out pennies
for black-jacks for the kids,
where Brylcremed youths
idly drag on their Woodbines
in nicotine-fingered anticipation
of National Service, where,
interned in Aldershot camp,
they will learn how to peel potatoes
and know boredom
from the inside.
We studied Imelda Maguire’s poem “Origins” in a writers’ workshop recently. So this note records my grateful thanks to her for the inspiration – and if there is imitation, my apologies.
