HOMECOMING

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Back from the combatzones

Of the rest of Europe

And patriotic ticker-tape parades,

England's sons

Had no homes

To come back to

In the mid-1940s.

Military camps

Luxury flats

City hotels

Were abandoned.

Fears of air raids

By Nazi planes

Dropping bombs 

Power outages

Cities blown to the bare bricks

Sent every...

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outside the window,

an ocean of poppies,

red like denial.

she watched them day-in-day-out,

from sunset to the first shards of sunlight

which crept through their stems

and reflected the underside of their petals.

from this she saw veins, a tiny network of

lines like join-up-the-dots,

a motorway map

thin like emotion.

dadd went to war ...

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