Poetry feature: GRANDFATHER’S SHOES

I walk here,
on a early Warwickshire morning,
with frost tipping the tress around me,
in my grandfather’s shoes.

They are large shoes.
Owned
by two men
I never knew.

Many stories
I’ve been told,
Have kept them
around, milling about,
in my head.

They’re the shoes
of a whole generation
who gained so much,
who stood at the harbour
of new things,
whose newness did them
no favours.

Started with
the ships.
Everything that was,
was nothing next to
to all the doing
that was going on.

Marked by old wars,
they marched into cold, wet
mornings and tawny, smoky
afternoons.

What went wrong with
their hopes?

War ended in the big world
and, before they could make
their lives,
armies ran out of
local foxholes to
make theirs’s boundless.

Coming among men in
a time of uprising,
that thrown away
their precious time.

Teenage agitators,
attempting to lay
the foundations of kindness,
found themselves unable
to be kind.

How many small horrors

did they witness?

Every week,
a new depression.
Butchers,
who were the brothers
they grew up with.
Sons, who they watched
sink back into quicksand.

GIRL IN HER COMMUNION DRESS
OLD MAN WATCHING THE WORLD CUP
MEN ON THEIR WORK BUS BACK FROM GLENANNE

How many worlds

did they see destroyed?

With these dead in mind,
as i dander about
in this sweet morning
with so much to do,
the most I can do now —
to not judge them
too harshly.