As a child I found a stinking gas mask.

It consisted of decaying rubber and plastic.

Uncomfortable though it was, I tried it on,

Constricting my breathing.  As under a green sea, 

I saw my sister, smiling…

I didn’t keep it on for very long!

I flung it back into the drawer

With all the farthings and the ha’pennies

And a ration book, redundant relics

From the Second World War,

Which no one had got around

 To throwing away.

 

Our past accumulates.  It banks up

Like the soft rock strata in a coastal cliff.

Lower down in the drawer, had I but looked,

Were some pieces of scrimshaw

And battered old workhouse records,

A cavalry sword and a blunderbuss,

Some bows and arrows and a hard flint tool…

Tenacious tendrils of the roots which made us.

It’s not just a subject which we learn in school!

Whatever we do, whatever we say,

History clearly filters through,

Into every strand of our DNA.