Coming up England by a different
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,'Why,
Coventry!' I exclaimed. "I was born here.'I leant far out, and squinnied for a
That this was still the town that had been 'mine'So long, but found I wasn't even
Which side was which.
From where those
Were standing, had we annually
For all those family hols? . . .
A whistle went:
Things moved.
I sat back, staring at my boots.'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'No, only where my childhood was unspent,
I wanted to retort, just where I started:
By now I've got the whole place clearly charted.
Our garden, first: where I did not
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid familyI never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be'Really myself'.
I'll show you, come to that,
The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it; where
Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
And, in those offices, my
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,
Who didn't call and tell my father
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'
