I.
It wasn’t easy getting out of the Tsar’s Russia.
They had to bribe and lie.
And it was terrible on the ship.
They couldn’t go up deck,
Someone stole all their luggage,
And the children were sick with fever.
Still, she came through it, my young grandmother,
And travelled to Manchester,
Where my grandfather was waiting, with a new language,
In Cheetham Hill.
II.
Really, they’d wanted to reach America,
But never saved enough for the tickets,
Or perhaps it was just that their hearts were in the east,
And they could go no farther west.
However it was, when Hitler went hunting,
We found that luckily
They had come far enough.