It was 1960

Only fifteen years after the War ended

(Though we did'nt know it) and the

Prevailing dogma, a brave new world meant

Knocking down brick terraces

(Often quite servicable)

To build ten-storey flats.

Kids like us played in derelict houses

Door-less and

Stripped of copper and roof-slates their

Dank stone cellars exciting with

What today they call memorabilia;

War-time stirrup pumps

ARP tin hats

Dusty VE Day flags and tangled bunting

 

In that dawn of soot and damp and the smoke from endless

Fires burning memories and

Caterpillar tractors levelling the past in a

Wasteland of cobbled streets they erected

Giants made of ready mixed concrete mixed with

Miles of steel reinforcement to the orchestral thuds of

Pile drivers digging those

Brute foundations

 

Do the flat-folk in their boxes consider what

Lies beneath?

Those terraces and their sons and daughters had seen war

Their cellars were shrines to their dead

What can concrete foundations offer?