Poem 1 Uncle Albert – The Unlived Life
We called him ‘Uncle’ although he wasn’t that
For he lived next door and wore a trilby hat
And for fifty years being the fast-walking dead
He walked all day with a shell-shocked head.
He’s absent from any war memorial stone
Although no memorial could ever atone
For the shell-shocked Hell of a life imploding
Immense percussions of close shells exploding.
Unlooking eyes with unwavering gaze
And seeming trapped in a deadly daze
He stared ahead, quite straight ahead
The staring stare of the living dead.
Poor Albert marched each day around our City
And in many broken hearts there welled up pity
This tall, unseeing ghost in trilby hat and gabardine
Silent witness to a war that should never have been.
While I as a child with my unseeing eyes
Never aware of Albert’s hidden cries
As he daily marches for fifty long years
Only now I see, through a veil of tears.
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