Sunday, 5 July 2015

A Poem for 7/7

I have to declare from the outset that I have previously posted this poem below (7th May, 2011). With the 10th anniversary of 7/7 upon us, and given the recent atrocity in Tunisia, I believe my words of July, 2005, to be as appropriate now as they were then. The memory of the day after the attack remains fresh in my mind; equally fresh is the pain and grief of the relatives of those who were killed, maimed and traumatised. For all those murdered, injured and maimed in mind and body by the bomb attacks in London on 7/7, I post this poem yet again:

ON ALPERTON STATION

(July 8th, 2005)


I stood on Alperton Station,

“Uncertain and afraid”

Of sudden, unseen terror –

My train was undelayed.


I left the silent platform

To start my working day,

When, on the darkened staircase,

A young girl barred my way.


She shimmered like the summer dawn.

“Please stay, my friend”, she said.

Her face was bright with metal shards

That garlanded her head.


“For you still have the working day,

The breakfast and the train,

The coffee break, the journey home

That I won’t make again.


My laughter lit the London skies;

I loved, and I was loved.

I filled a hole in many hearts

Till Hate had me removed.


If you’re in town at Christmas –

A time that I won’t see –

Please find my favourite wine bar

And raise one glass for me”.


Before I spoke – she vanished.

I slumped against a wall,

Shivered like a windblown leaf

And hoped I’d dreamed it all.



I walked from Alperton Station


And wondered what was real –


So glad for hands that trembled,


So glad for nerves that feel.
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1 comment:

  1. Neville Grundy5 July 2015 at 13:29

    On 7th July 2005, I was travelling to London with a union member who was making his final appeal against dismissal to the Civil Service Appeal Board. When the train reached Crewe, we were all told without explanation to get off and go back to where we'd come from, although people began to find out why through their mobiles. I recall that it was a beautiful sunny day when we got back to Preston, in sharp contrast to the horrors we were hearing on my car radio after we left the station.

    I am certain that massacres - from the 7th July bombings to the recent beach murders in Tunisia - are a direct consequence of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It also needs to be borne in mind that, whatever losses we have suffered as a nation since then, they cannot match in scale the number of violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion: the most conservative estimate is c. 140,000 to 160,000 non-combatants, equivalent to the entire population of Oxford.

    Having said that, the numbers do not detract from the fact that every innocent violent death is equally tragic.

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