Snapshot

History Cover

Mr Hart's away
I presume heart trouble
Year Eight History
In stuffy Room W8
With its perplexing perspex windows
Ghosts of ancient graffiti
Casting shadows on mottled brown
And crisscrossed prison security grilles
Keeping "them" out or keeping "us" in.
The boys beaver away like beavers
What was farming like in 1750?
They copy the photostat picture
Field B (Barley)
Field C (Fallow)
And the tiny cows
That graze
On the common land.
They can identify with that.
I try to write a poem
About a lost hour
In a lost classroom
The dullness of these moments
The aching emptiness
That will sometimes
Masquerade as education
Then by the overflowing bin
I spot an ancient banana
Mouldering blackly on a central heating pipe
And suddenly I feel I'm not alone.
It's true what they say about
History informing the present.