‘Savoury stuff. That’s the ticket,’

Said my friend in the canteen queue.

Naturally more circumspect,

I asked ‘Is that potato real?’

‘You’re joking,’ quipped Young Doris

(Old Doris was doing desserts),

And piled the slop up on my plate.

Those lunches hit you where it hurts.

 

Finding a table, we sat down,

With colleagues in old overalls,

Who talked of hangings and of words,

Of plumbing blocked and victory.

I thought of repurposed churches,

Of comrades who had disappeared,

And of the odd kind glance or wink

Among the populace you feared.

 

Once I escaped to the oxygen

Of green leaves in the countryside.

No compulsory love or hate –

No one here was being denounced –

Just the sound of birds and crickets;

I lay, blissful, beneath a tree.

Then Angry Man, hogging the screen,

Cried: ‘You’re gambling with World War Three!’