The film is jumpy in the sprockets, bleached
in black and white and all the shades of grey.
The memory is dying. Look: this is Jack,
The seaswell, the old grey swilltub
filling in the first milky light with grey ships,
so many manoeuvring in so much silence. Jamey?
Jimmy or was it Jack? The sky another grey.
Jammy we called him for he was lucky.
He’d been in Africa in tanks, the one man out
when the magazine blew and all his mates gone.
They put him back together. Jerry.
George? He’d gotten wed, they had 36 hours
of Withernsea passion in a mate’s caravan.
The sky bleached out. Here the shoreline
of dune and shingle, flat country over the seawall.
John? Joey? Jim? Home the last time turning
at the back kitchen door, his handprint
pressed into the wet blue paintwork. That
she kept thereafter, that was all of him.
Photographs say nothing. Cheekyface
she called him. And he liked his beer.
Years from now she’ll sing again
she’ll dream again we’ll meet again.
And there’ll be bluebirds. Jess. Jeff.
5th East Yorks wet and seasick off La Rivière.
Shot or drowned, face down in the sea,
his white enamel mug drifting after him.
Years from now the wireless becomes the radio,
the gramophone the record player
and the record player the stereo, she’ll sing along
songs he sang her then, his lily and his rose.
Josh. Johnny. Jock. The memory is dying,
the battery running flat. Before it fades
let’s say this one is for Jimmy and for Jack,
and all the others who are never coming back.