December 1952

It’s all the same to us stale spirits;
mustard gas, coal fires, exhaust fumes…
taking the air however,
whenever it calls, dragged
from the noxious dampness of sleep
to this lightness,
this death-dealing passage of poison.

And that great smog was my first return.
Those who had lived on the land drifted over
to Smithfield: thirteen Aberdeen Angus cattle;
the first reported casualties.
Those more cultured, to La Traviata settling
silently over the cheap seats at Sadlers’ Wells,
stopping the show.
And me?
I went back to my book stacks
at the British Museum, inadvertently
weaving damp into the bindings of
recent acquisitions, folding myself
deep into the dry lungs of archivists.

But mostly we just wanted to go home.
And so we swirled around bus-stops,
gathered in gardens and garages,
passed over windowsills and under doors
layered chill yellow hopefulness
into tea-towels and eiderdowns.

Four days we had that December;
four days of remembrance; exhaled into
London, inhaled into homecoming hallways.
Four days in the living before,
on that fifth morning, a rising sun
and a stirring wind
blew us away.

Frances Green

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