As I went out to work this morning

All on a horrible day,

An evening sky lay on the common,

Prematurely grey.

My tiny boy sat on the stairs

All kidnapped in his dream

And waiting for the coming world

To happen or to seem.

I couldn’t tell what things he saw

Nor say what sounds he heard,

But only sense how innocence

Will break against a word.

The world proceeding from his eyes

Was everything I saw

As, like a camera’s aperture,

I briskly shut the door.

And all the morning, through to noon,

And then from noon to nine

His seeing lodged here in my eyes

And made his vision mine.

The roads became a jousting field,

The cars began to prance,

A rider tumbled to the ground, 

Made headless by a lance.

The pigeons roared like Spitfires,

Above the chalk-walled banks,

The shoppers fought like Ironsides,

The taxis turned to tanks.

The gas came from the cooling duct

And seaped beneath the door

The chairman started choking

And fell dead to the floor

The concourse of the Underground,

With open-mouthing caves,

Consumed a million volunteers

For the long linear graves.

As I came home this evening

And the suburb clocks said nine

My tiny boy lay in his bed

Far from these wars of mine.

And somewhere, in a radio,

A country snapped in half

And the whole invited audience

Roared a riotous laugh.

Faithful by the tiny bed

The smiling rocking horse

Was waiting for the order

To seize the world by force.

Alan Franks