A back-bedroom in Bootle, grandparents’ house, my mother

having too hard a time of me, father out on the briny

with the dolphin and shark. Here's a Box-Brownie photograph:

me, christening shawl, an uncle, dapper, fair-isle, plus-fours,

eyes hurt by a late-May afternoon sun; he's holding me up

high as the fence, as though great luck will come of it. It's not

to be trusted. A bullet and desert flies are already out there

looking for him. My father isn't welcome here. How could she marry

(what fine social distinctions then!) so much beneath her?

Fernhill Road. Great-grandmother's coffin; lifted to kiss

a corpse goodbye; crouching in a sandbagged shelter;

finding shrapnel, the fins of dead incendiary bombs

along the cratered road.