in town but neither, God forgives me, is she.)

How my lovely lady wife produced such a plain,

surly child beggars my belief. Their boy Leslie

is an ailing thing. It is my duty to keep him alive.

Our Florence emigrated with Wilfrid to Australia,

which cracked open her mother’s heart, and mine.

Saturdays I take youngest boys to watch

Woolwich Arsenal get beaten. Second-rate losers.

The Gunners, that is, not my sons.

WHEN HOARDINGS declare war with Germany

I thank God I am Naturalised Citizen not ‘Enemy Alien’.

Still – locals cross the road at my approach,

rumour I am one of the Kaiser’s despised spies,

degrade my shutters with ‘GO HOME FILTHY HUN!’,

shout ‘Traitor!’ to harass my loyal customers

so that my sweet bread hardens into stale bricks

and for first time ever my ovens get stone cold.

(They are my neighbours.

Over 50 years.

I am known.)

When a submarine torpedoed the Lusitania,

I am as furious as any other upstanding person

and curse those bastards making lambs to slaughter, but –

LOCK THEM ALL UP! screams the Daily Sketch;

German businesses are burnt down, we are sacked,

refused service, men beaten up, daschunds stoned,

police even search my home for carrier pigeons!

Soon all German males incarcerated on Isle of Man

where they eat birds and miss their wives and children.

By end of the war 30,000 are deported.

ONE STICKY summer’s night Woolwich seethed

after Zeppelin bombers had bombarded the Arsenal

with explosions which reverberated for miles,

and the tide of the Thames had swollen to overflowing,

and a mob emerged from The Gunmakers Arms

on the rampage and converged on Wilkenings,

their faces bulbous knots, their voices crushed glass,

with rocks gripped in reddened fists they smashed

the bakery windows, raided the premises and trashed it

while Louis, who’d just extinguished his bedside lamp

and crawled underneath the sheet to cuddle Gladys,

stumbled downstairs in his stripy nightshirt – horrified.

When they left he collapsed on a carpet of flour,

shattered glass, scattered coal, smeared faeces, and cried.

The next day he boarded up shop. Later it was sold.

He put everything in crates and packed up his heart.

He moved up to Plumstead – to No 63 Griffin Road.

And when the heart of his beloved Gladys stopped,

he crawled into the back parlour, and just sat there

day and night, in darkness, alone.

Plumstead, London, 1920

I AM A MAN not a nation, Louis was given to say

on the rare occasion he had conversations.

He took to playing Wagner so loud the neighbours

complained but he didn’t give a damn about them,

playing Ride of the Valkyries over and over again.

At No 63 Griffin Road the curtains were closed.

He sat in the parlour puffing on his Filet St Omer pipe,

buried in mountains of smoke, his once-erect back

curved and shrank and his lungs struggled to expand.

His grandson Leslie visited after school,