*I am especially gratified that this was the second most ‘liked’ and viewed poem that I posted this year. It is a piece that had been rattling around in the back of my mind for some years now, but only came together under the inspiration of one of Andy Townend’s Poetry Rehab prompts. It is a poem about childhood memories and the demise of 1970s trade-union politics, but it is also a belated Christmas poem of sorts. I continue to trim and touch it up, but I think that it is approaching a definitive version.*

 

Throwing the Postman out of the Pram

 

The squeaky plastic toy postman

was part of a series of shampoo bottles

—policeman, hard-hatted construction-worker,

fire-fighter, farmer, nurse—

a whole trade union movement

of workers dirtied by politics and labor

and cleansed by a daily baptism of bubble-bath;

and dirty for having been in and out

of your baby mouth so often,

and in and out of your high-walled pram

into the dirt and back, little sister,

until lost.

*

Oddly,

the loss of that little postman,

somewhere outside of the pram,

squashed, on the narrow sidewalk

between the blackened car-park walls

and the trucks thundering

along the once sleepy high street

through the center of town,

somewhere between the shiny-windowed family planning clinic

and the bakery chimney black with sugary soot

and the scent of gingerbread men,

lost forever under the wheels of a juggernaut,

upset me far more than you

with your giggling fort-da games.

*

The little postman was thrown unceremoniously

under the bus, as workmen drilled the road

noisily under red&white striped tents

between cups of tea. And probably laughed.

Mother didn’t even notice he had gone,

still less you, little sister, with your new-born smile.

Only I noticed that the postman

was missing and no longer among us

no longer lined up alongside the other smiling guilded icons

rimming the bath.

The only smile lacking mine.

The engineer was not weeping,

nor the policeman seeking him out,

nor the nurse tending his wounds.

“I’m alright, Jack,” they each seemed to grin back

from their own squeezy soapy toy world.

No solace there.

The dirty bathwater gurgled down into the plughole

as always and all was lost. The postman gone.

*

Later, policemen would take sticks to the backs of miners

and printers; squeeze the life out of picketing dockers;

bludgeon firemen and factory workers. Throw them all

out of the high-walled pram of the nanny state,

like unwanted toys.

*

The message the stern-faced postman brought was never his own:

letters from half-forgotten family members popped

through the post box among bills. The flurry of cards

and packages at the end of the year justified the postman’s Christmas box.

Even carefully packed clotted cream.

*

Once a year—double overtime—we would trudge—

duffel-coated little Santa’s helpers—

down to the railway station to load bags

full of gifts and festive greetings onto waiting trains.

And the ASLEF driver would step off the plate

to warm his feet on a two-bar fire and rant Utopian dreams,

riding his metal sleigh sullenly through icy dark of night,

a Santa clad in Lenin red

cheering us with his tales of times to be.

….

We wait now for the postman thrown out of the pram to be found—

the redeeming Übermensch,

Homoousia knitted back together

by kind ladies who go to church—

and hang fairy lights in trees

to welcome his return.

 

Tinker, tailor, soldier and sailor

have lost touch with the candlestick-maker

who is out of work these days. Unions come

and go. Places taken by accountants,

upstart slum landlords, slick-talking lobbyists,

lawyers, ad-men, bankers, TV anchors.

But none of these become icons filled with foaming bubble-bath

squirted out with the cheerful squeak

of a station master ordering off a train

in a mist of sooty steam and a flapping of flags;

or of a factory chimney tooting time

for workers to knock off and get back home

on bikes

to polish billiard cues for the night ahead,

or of milkmen whistling

on whirring floats

as they do their rounds.