I Remember, I Remember

I Remember, I Remember

1.  

   I Remember, I Remember
   Coming up England by a different line
   For once, early in the cold new year,
   We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
   Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
   'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. "I was born here.'

   I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
   That this was still the town that had been 'mine'
   So long, but found I wasn't even clear
   Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates
   Were standing, had we annually departed

   For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went:
   Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots.
   'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'
   No, only where my childhood was unspent,
   I wanted to retort, just where I started:

   By now I've got the whole place clearly charted.
   Our garden, first: where I did not invent
   Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
   And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
   And here we have that splendid family

   I never ran to when I got depressed,
   The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
   Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
   'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that,
   The bracken where I never trembling sat,

   Determined to go through with it; where she
   Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
   And, in those offices, my doggerel
   Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
   By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,

   Who didn't call and tell my father There
   Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -
   'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'
   My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
   I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.
   'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'