childhood

Childhood

Unbearable, forgotten dreams,
Breaking down
Before I properly knew
What it was to break –

Now at forty-eight
Bach’s Fugue, florid music
That I tried to play
At that school, the Quaker School.
Sent home after my mother’s visit
To a house, my father’s house
My father
Don’t cry, baby,
But I did –

That house still stands
And the cathedral of glass.
A poet, I am a poet
And a musician,
That is all.

The brass band plays,
I twirl down the hill.
Blue lias all the way down,
All the way down.

Earlier I wake,
The tor frowns,
It is still there of course
A painted sunset
Fire screen
Tapers
Scream.

Christopher Baily
October 1998
© Estate of Christopher Baily