Formalities over and farewells exchanged,

and a short ride through the town to the station –

May sunshine arouses the smell of departure

and carriages, warms the platform crowded with children.

They’re blazered and tied, and on their way home,

with voices sounding of suburbs and London –

confident in football and matches, their faces laughing,

and eager. Black children from freed generations,

and lost times of service on plantations,

and post war devotion to Queen and to promises.

 

The train comes and carries them homewards

and station on station deposits them places

where new lives have rooted, chains cast aside

in exchange for mortgages, ambitions, and gardens –

with Kent’s grammar schools nurturing for ages

of networks, home working, promotions.

 

Slowly the train refills as it cruises the rooftops,

the vanishing churches. More faces, more tongues,

more origin stories. Diasporas quicken and gather.

Down there, on the streets and bombed wastelands,

I grew up, not knowing of trade and decisions,

amongst white faces and chatter, excitement at bus stops.

We had maypoles in playgrounds, Home Service evenings,

a vanishing wartime, and comics and swappings.

Now those faces departed, and friendships forgotten.

 

And I’m back at the funeral, and Rachael.

A young woman, black and adopted, successful

and funny. Married and leaving her children, her husband,

my dear friends her parents. And taken, cremated.

 

And suddenly fading: outrage at the Empire,

the passage of slavers, the roots that discredit.

Today there is sunshine, and a city of hopefuls,

of unity, sadness, and still going forward.