…….
The maps of the mind are not printed on paper,
Colours are different, sizes, untrue,
Larger or smaller, brighter or dimmer,
Footprints and tracks of places now gone,
Changed and built over by turbulent times.
Snapshots stored in the mind's eye glitter
With summers past and changeable weather.
…….
In my nothingness days before time ran
Young flesh was locked into factory hell,
Slaving through air raids, to meet the targets,
Then wathcing all night on the ack ack guns.
Marconi radar, Hoffman ball bearings,
Crompton parts for the planes and the tanks.
In the machine shop there's no air raid shelter,
"Cross the while line painted there on the floor,
It's safe on that side, under steel girders."
…….
But hundreds of girls on the night shift were killed,
The direct hit of a jettisoned bomb.
In my nothingness days before time ran
The world seeped into my quickening flesh,
The smell, the sound, the taste and the fear,
The frame that guided the shape of my life.
When sirens wail and the bombers rumble,
My guts and jy heart tremble once more.
…….
In my pink and breastfed infancy
Her arms were a bun warm span of safety,
His were bristles and prickling tweed,
A map of flying deeps and peaks
White water rafting a knitted shawl.
Ogres peered into the second hand pram.
And we mapped inside my head.
In an unknown country, name unsaid.
…….
In my yellowy daisy free roaming days
In the tall grasses as high as my eye,
By the green pond of forbidden fruit,
Under the sun of golden wires,
His hair was a glory, a halo of light,
Cheek like a down covered pale silver peach.
I kissed the face as he flinched away,
The kiss that stayed with me always.
Tall grasses jungled my sunblind head,
Still ponds of tadpoles, boatmen skittering,
Dragonflies shimmied in silent skies.
Cattle gazed, and fields of quiet stood
By running waters and empty roads.
People war shattered, faces closed,
Each nursing secrets of deadly past.
Our blank road and copse our council house,
And in water meads my horizons were cast.
…….
In my green apple greased lightening growing up days
We raced schoolyard and road
Hop skipped the map to the Co op and back
Green smelly bussed to Chelmsford town,
To the loose laced river, the rationed shops.
A pound of cheese, wrapped in brown paper and string,
By the man in a butcher's stripe apron and straw hat.
Worth a penny more to be served like that.
Three great factories swallowed us all
Then belched us out on swarms of bikes.
Like plagues of squashed flies in swarms we flew,
Back to the houses with no mod cons.
I remember the lisping girl, smart kilt and ringlets,
To and fro running from door to gate,
Forbidden to open the gate to the street,
Forbidden to join the game with me.
Her mother inside, a suicide.
I remember her standing there alone -
Fifty years gone. Where is she now?
Which featureless map has she journeyed on?
…….
We went with the crowds to the Festival of Britain,
On the smelly old train via Liverpool Street,
The Skylon was weird and so were the house shams,
With china designed to look oh so modern,
They tried to tell us they knew what we wanted.
…….
In my red rollicking days
We turned somersaults on the metal bars
Twirling around outside the pub,
Shook old man's beard from the school lane hedge,
Ran and ran, chest bursting and gasping,
Played tag and it and he and fleas,
Linked arms and sang marching songs
It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring.
Elizabeth was beautiful in her golden coach.
We were so proud and we got souvenir chocolate
In a tin from the Council.
…….
In my blue and teenage high school days
The world closed up like a wounded heart,
The map turned back, the parchment twisted,
The roads led nowhere, we were drowning,
Locked in a bubble of tearing tears.
My clothes were navy, her eyes were cornflower,
His lips were blue, the hospital white.
Cuban and Russian missiles would hit us,
The bomb would kills us, the food would run out,
The rent was not paid, no hope in sight.
Outside the bubble, the map went on,
To Boreham, to Braintree, to Walton, to Harwich.
Essex grew larger inside my head,
Essex the gateway to fantasy places,
To London, to Spain, to holiday sun.
Prosperous Essex, ski holidays and ponies,
Hairdos and mini skirts, big cars and TVs,
Boyfriends and parents with holiday homes -
But none of it mine.
…….
In my brown oh so boring office days
Work was an office of those who had failed
To be fit to die with Essex courage.
Dim wit managers, nervous wreck managers,
Drink sodden pilots, Burma rail skeletons,
Sergeant Majors still bellowing,
TB victims, wide boys, good-time girls,
The crippled and broken were hid somewhere else.
The flower of the nation, all lost, all lost.
In another world, life moved forward,
Armstrong walked on the ghostly moon,
But the wars went on, Ireland and VietNam,
Chile, Palestine, India and Pakistan,
And my Essex was spoiled by these terrible crimes.
…….
In my polka dot black and white Op Art days
We loved Carnaby Street and Essex was empty.
The boom babies rock n rolled up to London
Filling the gaps of the lost generation.
We jived in the school room, mashed at the bus stop,
Locomotion was danced in factory tea-breaks.
Essex was empty. The airfields healed over.
At Rivenhall and Hornchurch the silence returned.
Skylarks sparkled their sharp melodies
Over a county of blond waving wheat,
Green ripples turning to flaxen oceans,
Barley bristles to rivers of silk,
Lanes crammed with dog rose, blackberry brambles,
Black sloes and elder, rose hip and haw hip,
Wild hop and crab apple, fat purple bullace,
Herbs that would kill you and herbs that would cure you,
Mushrooms and hazel nuts, chestnuts
And peace.
…….
In my lusciously lilac days
Love was our food, the car was a spaceship,
We zoomed along in a car called a beetle,
Fought lorries from France and loaders from Holland,
Careered round the cones and growled at the road works.
The Summer of Love went on and on.
Maps were printed in primary colours with
Routes like neurons mapping our times.
Land was a rolling screen, landscapes and villages,
Full colour feature with stereo soundtrack.
Oh, how I miss the mega star elms,
Unmistakeable urn shapes playing the lead,
Their fan topped perfection cut from the picture,
Eons of giants crumbled and fell.
No angels to save them.
Men were as ants under their leaf mould,
But they ended as chair seats
Squashed by the backsides of more and more people.
Cure was impossible.
…….
In my amber spiralling laughing days
I yearn to map Essex, the big flat land,
Turkey plump bodies laid out for roasting,
Sleeping flat strands running miles out to sea,
Sand castles and moats, ice creams and gulls,
Pop music piers and candy floss kids.
Beaches of gold sand, whispering, sliding,
North winds with waves of whale back grey,
Land just a strip on a huge sky horizon,
More sky than land, more sky than sea.
Ghosts on salt marshes, desolate smugglers,
Screaming geese like a biblical plague,
Days spent combing the beaahes for amber,
Flotsam from storjs on the Baltic coast.
Red haired autumn, her sky eyes flashing,
While Canvey Island was flooded with death.
…….
In my ersatz American shopping mall days
A rainbow of wealth is waiting to mug me,
While somebody's child shivers with cold
While somebody's son crouches in doorways
Somebody's daughter's a heroine tart.
…….
I follow the path of the Celts who loved trees,
The Romans who took land, drained it, stole grain,
They brought with them every colour and faith,
Soldiers to settlers, more to the mix.
The Saxons who tilled, the Normans who taxed us,
The Saxons who tilled, the Normans who counted,
The Dutch who built dykes and drained it again.
The Peasants' Revolt, they were martyrs for us.
The rolling somersault land goes on,
Twisting through hamlets with old pagan names,
Wide vaulting towns with canvas stripe markets,
Concrete yard farms with ramparts of straw,
Gravel pits snarling with dinosaur diggers
Or sleeping as lakes filled up with tears.
Inland cliffs of pure singing limestone,
Ancient deer woodlands leaping with myth,
Black Shuck patrolling with flames for eyes,
Bones of saints mouldering, left undisturbed.
…….
Maps of Essex are written in sand and water,
Deeds and hedges and clods of clay,
Marshes and meadows in flesh and blood and memories,
Memories, memories of yesterday.
…….
December 2006 rev Jan 2010
Mary Argent copyright