Two Poems by Alan Hill

The Unwilling Worship of Light

On VE Day, May 8th, 1945, my mother 
danced in the street 
with all the other teenage girls 

It was from relief, rather than of victory 

There had been too much death
a six-year tableau of spillage, breakage
the random dice throw of annihilation     

taking of friends, neighbours in night fires 
the sudden dismembering of meaning 
nightly scatter of parts. 

Nothing special, unusual in that 
there was always somebody in greater pain. 

Wedged between sandwiches and cake 
she remembered the night the 
ammunition factory went up  

she, my grandparents tentatively emerged
out of their shelter, moles   
in the silence of a sun lite dawn 

to discover it, their garden, fertilized 
with seedings of empty shell cases  

a brilliant brass glitter that farmed the lawn 
cannisters of instant grief made tame  
passive, shimmered in shinned angles of 
indefinable brilliance

Can I Come Down Now

He had everything, the model of the Apollo 11 rocket 

crates of Lego, older brothers with an infinite supply 
of T Rex, Bowie 

mysterious untouchable pillars of progressive rock
flanking an extensive HI FI

a family that talked with no obvious dysfunction 
guilt 

a range of instant dayglo puddings 
butterscotch, banana, edible unthinkable exotica.   

Then the climbing frame 
a miracle of symmetrical steel that only the bravest 
could conquer  

where Fifty years later I am still on the top bar 

weight of metal pressing through flimsy tennis shoes, 
legs pulsating in terror 

my eyes still focussed 
on the future, empty fields, stillness beyond rooftops.