It was the year our eldest was expected

and emerged on a late August morning

to the cursing of her mother and the miners

being kicked out of their pits. Everyone

takes turn to be the enemy within.

 

The water towers which had brooded

with such immense solidity, for a century

and more, were soon to be broken.

City streets would overflow with human flotsam;

we’d rediscover the meaning of asylum.

 

Gorbachev and Reagan were meeting in Geneva

to play stud poker with the planet

and in the Roundway Hospital Social Club,

any evening of the week, dominoes tumbled

like the outposts of an evil empire.

 

Some of us nurses occupied Beech Ward

to protest at its closure and relocation

in the profitable sector; we passed the time debating

the merits of Back to the Future, amid the odour

of urine and beds we dared not lie on.

 

We had so little sleep I almost nodded

when Thatcher claimed there was no such thing

as society - just men and women

and their children, in a house they owned themselves

and a TV that fanned the flames of Brixton.

 

We discovered we’d made a hole in the heavens;

from there it was one small step to seeing

that space might be a place to dig a trench in;

the defensive is always offensive

to those without their finger on the button.

 

Glasnost and perestroika pulled the rug

from beneath the feet of unbelievers.

So many Olgas landed upon their backs

and the free world felt the benefits

of zero hours and real time simulation.

 

I knew this schizophrenic patient, who thought

the water tower harboured listening devices;

when it crumbled the loss was like a bereavement.

His voices didn’t cease but only grew much louder –

how else to articulate the notions of the day?