I’m working back to the dreamtime

of St James Primary in sixty-three,

the occluded and innocent days

before the gadgets and money took over –

 

like trying to retrieve the original colours

of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine

from muddied clumps we used

for project work in the afternoons –

 

my finest effort the model I made

with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom

of Hugh Cook Faringdon

that earned us two gold stars.

 

In our tiny enclave we were swamped

by history: a Victorian church,

where we crocodiled to Mass

on Wednesdays, praying hard for Russians;

 

and the airy, abandoned ruins

of an abbey that kept the secret

of a good king’s bones, its wrecked

high windows hoarding space.

 

Boys and girls, we never discovered

the mysteries of the others’ playground,

but chanted tables daily –

our paean to the god of rote learning.