I Came Back To You In September

I came back to you in September you were quiet then still, like you used to be, when men were men and I was just a child When the smell of the fish docks mingled well with the stench of the slaughter from the cattle market and an early morning crescendo of hooters meant work And you had to go When your father and my father crowded down on the docks desperate to catch the foreman's looks And from where so many fathers were turned away broken yet unbitter men Returning home like so often you did to pray and dream of better days than these and you hoped that things would change but for you you knew that they never would. And then the war came and I was sent away to fight for my country this country the one which had kept us all alive on a few pence a week and I left behind the smell of the fish docks the reek of the slaughter to earn my place in that world Your world And one day I returned fell in love and made love amongst the ruined ashes of what once was of what could never be again I lay planning out my life while the bombs fell And I sat amidst the solitude of that old terraced house frightened to death by that silence that stillness as ceaseless clocks ticked slowly away an era an end and I looked at your face and tried so hard not to see my own And I returned to that war that cruel bloody war fighting one inside me even greater than that one could ever have been but that war ends and I returned to that war your bloody war the one you pretended you never saw And the world returned to the smell of the fish docks the reek of the slaughter to that broken down world full of broken down lives grey faced men greeting faceless, shapeless wives And long before faces could ever begin to smile you died quietly giving up on your life like you had so many years before and I died as they buried you in an already forgotten part of that world and I could linger there no longer and left behind the smell of the fish docks the reek of that slaughter And I came back to you in September back to stare at a world which once was and yet could never be again Only a few old buildings remained standing empty and silent like when the bombs came and I looked into that face and tried so desperately not to see my own And I stood aloof to a world which could no longer reach me yet still I trembled lest some derelict echo from the past drew me back into that world that old cruel world where all men ever wanted to be was men And yet how I loved you in September as time once more stood still and oh how I loved that stillness as I returned to where childish laughter once filled empty spaces places where I had so long ago ceased to dream Amidst the dark dancing shadows where love becomes so physical that the poet's dreams are so finally shattered And on the cracked broken pavements where the bombs fell where you fell where we all fell so many years before And silent leaves fall on your grave on my grave like falling tears my tears for so many wasted years I came back to your in September you were quiet then still, like you used to be, when men were men and I was just a child.