BLACK AND WHITE WAR




(based on the wartime film Listen To Britain

It was a black and white time
that flickers on the screen.
A war of distant memory,
of lornful music,
drab towns
and clouds shadowing across the landscape.
Determined cliffs,
white and straight,
confine the protective collar of water.
It is a drab khaki world
of warm friendships and shared cigarettes.
Sweet tea in tin mugs,
people whistling while they worked:
simple needs, simply met.
Faces stiff in stoical defiance,
tired, their decency interrupted
by feigned barbarism.
Communing around the wireless
hearing words of determination
from a stuttering king.
Cold lightless dusk,
haunted by the siren's ghostly call.
Nights pass in comfortless companionship,
with deep throated engines outside
hinting at suppressed power.
The film recedes to dark streets
settling down for the night,
respecting their privacy.
The toiling day draws to another close
in the sunset's promise of dawn.
A lone Lancaster
silhouetted by moonlight
drones away into the night
and the watchful Spitfire
lurks behind darkening clouds.
A fighting nation
rests its troubled brow
and we reflect:
was all the anguish worth
what we are now?

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