Shock and Disbelief to the System - 1960: A Poem by Victoria Williams

illustration: Natalie Owen
 

When I descended from the plane I saw houses like
Factories, smoke billowing from roof tops,
Basement leading to backyard, cold and bare
Houses lived in by both rich and poor
With signs: no blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
Unbelievable, how could this be?

I lived in winding stairs attics
Leading to silent graveyard places
With cobwebs like hanging baskets of flowers.
Toilets stayed in backyards
Where washing became stiff as buckram,
As cold air penetrated like daggers to the heart.

Dinner is chips on the streets out of newspaper,
Breakfast when milkman left
Unwrapped bread on doorsteps
And dogs and cats
Like children with ice lollies
Descended on them like swarms of bees.

The cold wet weather,
With ice congregating on houses like birds
Perching on trees mocking sunny islands thoughts,
Make life difficult, with lonely, dreary days,                                        
Nights dark as pitch, fog thick as clotted cream,
Paraffin heaters smelling like cow dung
Open floodgates to cold and bronchitis.

Memories of miner’s boots echoing along cobbled roads
As they walked briskly in the cold half-lit dawn
Going down, down, down
Into the belly of the ground
To collect the black diamond, coal,
A must have commodity
To deliver to rich and poor alike.

My motto:
Get a job, work hard, save money
And return home in five years.
Fifty years on and still here
Looking for a pin in a haystack.
I am here to stay, I am here to stay,
After all the shock and disbelief to the system.