大象传媒

In 1940, it was called an Anderson, a shelter curved and ready
For us to flee into each night and hide from those German bombers.
Outside in our garden, a steel Wendy house, council constructed
Inside, a yellow flood of Essex water laps under our private pier.
Before the raids, we played boats in there, floating and docking them
'You're at Southend, I'm a bomber flying up the river.'
'Splash.'
'Sorry.'

Yet, this shelter shall not slide into the sea like last year's sandcastle.
My father, who doesn't trust Anderson, builds a mountain over the shelter
Filling sandbags and boxes until our small garden begins to disappear.
Reading my Wizard and Dandy, I believe I understand my father's war
I see him back on the Somme, the Anderson becoming his dugout,
He mounts his Lewis gun and scans the Dagenham sky for biplanes.

When the real bombers do come with their weird-searching engine beat
It's my mother who comforts us, covering us under the darkness of a quilt.
We lie there breathing the clay air, skidding fingernails on corrugated steel.
Those wet cool galvanic sides streaming from family breath, while near us
Getting closer, I can hear the faint thud thud of an approaching raid.
'It's our sailors' guns,' my mother says, 'It's the navy, our boats from the river.'

Swivelling in my mind, old newsreels show 18-inch guns sending
Great gobs of imagined flame and smoke around the Heinkels overhead.
I see them tracking the enemy in their sights as he struggles to escape.
Leaving the Thames, slowly weaving up through Barking Creek the ships,
Shadow the Germans until I hear guns cracking with anger alongside us.
The navy's here floating in the street, defending our garden, our Anderson.

After the raid, we clamber out of our clay cockpit into an autumn morning.
Last night's ships have all departed, gone on a flood tide back to moorings.
Riding line astern out in the estuary, I know that those night sailors are
Swabbing down decks, shining brass, drinking rum, dancing hornpipes.
Huge guns resting horizontal along decks, a tidal river retiring into drains
Of that nocturnal fleet no trace, the street is as dry as my imagination.

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