John Coopey

1962

by John Coopey

Sunday 27th November 2016 10:55 am

(A re-post from 2012, the 50th anniversary, but now apt again)

I’d never heard my mum or dad speak like that before

“Shut up!” they shouted as we played upon the kitchen floor

This photograph of memory will live for evermore.

An overbearing silence between us then ensues

Embarrassingly trodden on by the TV’s news

A charge of domesticity we kids feared to defuse.

We sensed an interlinkage of the shouting and TV

For once the news had ended there settled normalcy

Apart from guilty glaring from my dad to mum and me.

I’d never heard my mum or dad speak like that before

“Shut up!” they shouted as we played upon the kitchen floor

Their irritation spiked by prospect of the nuclear war.

🌷 (1)

◄ GARDEN OF LOVE (YOUR MOTHER'S SYCAMORE TREE)

WHAT WOULD CONVERT A BREXITER? ►

Comments

John Coopey

Mon 28th Nov 2016 22:32

I'll try to find it, Harry.

Harry O'Neill

Mon 28th Nov 2016 19:45

John,
Your poem expresses very well the rictus of fear that came over everybody at that very dangerous time.

(Those first three lines Jolt us into attention.)

I found out that the poet was Liverpool`s Matt Simpson...
but I cant find the poem.

John Coopey

Mon 28th Nov 2016 10:45

You may well be right, elP. I am unfamiliar with Cuban culture. Thankyou for your thoughts.

elPintor

Mon 28th Nov 2016 01:21

I'll tell you John, my dad has never shut up about the sixties..

A very interesting time, no doubt, and a very significant part of it is highlighted here in the comments. Yet, I feel there is much to Cuba of which we don't often think. Ray gives a good hint of it. I was privileged enough to do a stint for a couple of weeks with several men who were of Cuban descent and I look back after a decade and a half and wonder what they thought of us. It seems to me that they were still beautifully connected to a heritage to which most 'homogenized' Americans are deprived.

..not much to do with Castro, but then I suppose there's much more to Cuba's story than most will ever hear.

elP

John Coopey

Mon 28th Nov 2016 00:30

Thanks for your thoughts, Ray. It was the closest we've come to the brink in my lifetime.
For a long time the political wisdom was that the Kennedy brothers saw they need to give Kruschev a face-saving get-out. More recently it has been suggested that they secretly agreed to withdraw missiles in Turkey as a quid pro quo.

raypool

Sun 27th Nov 2016 22:45

I'd like to add my simple appreciation of the immediacy and stinging effect of the memory John and how well you have expressed it. Politics is an endless roundabout, and often the arguments are on shifting sand, so I won't even try to vie for a point of view here. All I do know is that the future of Cuba hangs in the balance - I might draw a parallel with New Orleans in terms of the wonderful music that comes from needy and fairly unsophisticated regions. I wonder why that is?

Ray

John Coopey

Sun 27th Nov 2016 21:32

I've googled it Harry with no success.
The Crisis was one of those milestone moments when, if they were around at the time, everyone knows what they were doing, where they were etc. JFK's assassination, England wining the World Cup, Princess Di dying etc.

Harry O'Neill

Sun 27th Nov 2016 20:49

jOHN,
As I remember reading in someone`s poem at the time...When the world `near died of Cuba`...I`ve never been able to find it since, but it stuck in my brain.

It was the American`s promise never to invade that saved it
and the Russian support which allowed it to develop into such an unattractive `Simon Pure` type of Marxism.

John Coopey

Sun 27th Nov 2016 20:47

Indeed, MC. Eisenhower should have cut his losses over the Cuban Revolution and dealt with Castro instead of snubbing him. Hence Kruschev gladly allied with Cuba in America's stead. It was a profitable arrangement for Cuba enabling them to introduce sophisticated and wide ranging medical and educational reforms normally underpinned by a strong economy. It all started to look very shaky though with the demise of the USSR and the bankrolling stopped.
It's taken 50 years and a nuclear precipice but Cuba through Raul now looks to the US.

M.C. Newberry

Sun 27th Nov 2016 13:39

Castro was - and still is - a divisive figure. His efforts
involving Kruschev's Russia in nuclear war brinkmanship
his greatest crime against the world's chance of survival,
like a spoiled brat running to a big bully for protection.
That said, the USA - with the likes of the CIA under
Allen Dulles (whose reputation has since been subjected
to less than flattering scrutiny and judgement) acting
like some bellicose belligerent power separated from
the truly dangerous reality - was the source of the
gangster-driven influence on the Cuban dictator toppled
by the Castro-led insurgents. The links between the
Mob and the CIA have since been the subject of retrospective concern, and not without reason knowing
what is known now.

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