STILLE NACHT
I was born at Horton Kirby in the county of Kent some time after midnight on December 25th 1944. I weighed 10 lbs and resembled, to general amusement, a tiny Winston Churchill. I don’t know whether Mum really did struggle unduly to bring me into the world, but she vowed there and then that the first would also be the last.
Dad and A. were staying at my grandparents’ cottage half way down narrow, winding Hockenden Lane, near the village of Swanley. A. was on leave from his posting to RAF Coastal Command in India and Dad was on Christmas break from his reserved occupation in London. When the early morning ‘phone call came, the two of them wrestled their bikes from amongst the boxes of apples in the Anderson shelter and wobbled their way through Swanley and along the dark and frozen lanes south of Hextable towards South Darenth and thence to Horton Kirby. Dad, a vigorous if inelegant cyclist, spent much of the journey over-riding the bends and picking himself out of hedges whilst A., with the circumspection of the skilled RAF navigator, arrived at the maternity home intact.
I lay startled and uncomprehending in my new, harsh world as Dad languished, A. hovered, Mum scolded and the midwife laughed. Beyond the deep windows and a few miles north of the icebound orchards of West Kent, flying bombs fell on London and the War prevailed.
...
I have posted this poem twice before. It wasn’t due a re-posting, having yet to undergo further revision. But at this time it seems more fitting somehow to dwell on beginnings rather than endings.
Dad and A. were staying at my grandparents’ cottage half way down narrow, winding Hockenden Lane, near the village of Swanley. A. was on leave from his posting to RAF Coastal Command in India and Dad was on Christmas break from his reserved occupation in London. When the early morning ‘phone call came, the two of them wrestled their bikes from amongst the boxes of apples in the Anderson shelter and wobbled their way through Swanley and along the dark and frozen lanes south of Hextable towards South Darenth and thence to Horton Kirby. Dad, a vigorous if inelegant cyclist, spent much of the journey over-riding the bends and picking himself out of hedges whilst A., with the circumspection of the skilled RAF navigator, arrived at the maternity home intact.
I lay startled and uncomprehending in my new, harsh world as Dad languished, A. hovered, Mum scolded and the midwife laughed. Beyond the deep windows and a few miles north of the icebound orchards of West Kent, flying bombs fell on London and the War prevailed.
...
I have posted this poem twice before. It wasn’t due a re-posting, having yet to undergo further revision. But at this time it seems more fitting somehow to dwell on beginnings rather than endings.
STILLE NACHT
On the night
that I was born,
the bells rang out
across the world.
In Coventry, in Dresden,
the bones of two cathedrals
sheltered worshippers with candles,
witnessing the ruins.
In Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the story goes,
the death’s-head guards
sang, “Stille nacht,
heilige nacht”. Their voices
slid across the Polish snow.
The sweetest tenor was Ukrainian,
the man they called Peter the Silent.
He never spoke and he killed
with a lead-filled stick.
In the Union Factory, packing shells,
they dreamed of Moses.
...
In Horton Kirby, fields froze
and ice deadlocked the lanes.
My father rose in the cold
blue-before-dawn light
and cycled sideways,
wreathed in silver mist,
to the hospital. Each turn
of the track betrayed him
and scarred by thorns and gravel,
he bled by our bedside.
My mother laughed, she remembers,
as the nurse administered.
“Been in the wars?” she asked.
Outside, across the Weald,
from out of a cloudless dawn
the buzz bombs crumpled London.
...
Outside a town in the Ardennes
Private Taunitz hung
like a crippled kite
high in a tree.
A cruciform against the sky,
he seemed to run forever
through the branches,
running home for the new year.
Outside Budapest three men
diced for roubles
in the shelter of a tank.
Fitful rain, a moonless night.
Sasha struck a match
across the red star
on his helmet, the red star
that led them to this place.
Extra vodka, extra cigarettes,
a rabbit stewed,
the tolling of artillery
to celebrate the day.
...
The blackouts drawn,
December light invaded.
We awoke, slapped hard
by the early world.
Our siren voices
climbed into the morning,
a choir of outrage,
insect-thin but passionate.
Through tears our parents
smiled: within the song
of our despair they heard
a different tune.
And as our voices
sucked the air, swallowing
the grumble of the bombs,
only the bells survived.
On the night
that I was born,
the bells rang out
across the world.
In Coventry, in Dresden,
the bones of two cathedrals
sheltered worshippers with candles,
witnessing the ruins.
In Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the story goes,
the death’s-head guards
sang, “Stille nacht,
heilige nacht”. Their voices
slid across the Polish snow.
The sweetest tenor was Ukrainian,
the man they called Peter the Silent.
He never spoke and he killed
with a lead-filled stick.
In the Union Factory, packing shells,
they dreamed of Moses.
...
In Horton Kirby, fields froze
and ice deadlocked the lanes.
My father rose in the cold
blue-before-dawn light
and cycled sideways,
wreathed in silver mist,
to the hospital. Each turn
of the track betrayed him
and scarred by thorns and gravel,
he bled by our bedside.
My mother laughed, she remembers,
as the nurse administered.
“Been in the wars?” she asked.
Outside, across the Weald,
from out of a cloudless dawn
the buzz bombs crumpled London.
...
Outside a town in the Ardennes
Private Taunitz hung
like a crippled kite
high in a tree.
A cruciform against the sky,
he seemed to run forever
through the branches,
running home for the new year.
Outside Budapest three men
diced for roubles
in the shelter of a tank.
Fitful rain, a moonless night.
Sasha struck a match
across the red star
on his helmet, the red star
that led them to this place.
Extra vodka, extra cigarettes,
a rabbit stewed,
the tolling of artillery
to celebrate the day.
...
The blackouts drawn,
December light invaded.
We awoke, slapped hard
by the early world.
Our siren voices
climbed into the morning,
a choir of outrage,
insect-thin but passionate.
Through tears our parents
smiled: within the song
of our despair they heard
a different tune.
And as our voices
sucked the air, swallowing
the grumble of the bombs,
only the bells survived.
