Mr. Dyson

Mr Dyson did in fact live a few doors up from my grandparents who lived on Martins Road, Lundwood. I still feel ashamed but I suppose this can be excused for being ignorant then of the horror of the British PoWs under the Japanese in the Far East.

Mr. Dyson

Lived on in childhood’s council rows

A house as commonplace as all the rest,

But marked by rank garden and ranged weeds 

Where past the lop-hinged gate and uncut hedge 

From grey net he’d sense a world creep

On estate roads, through days summer-spread

Or evening’s damp and drizzling hours.

Sometimes on unwashed steps he’d lean unshaven, 

Cornered frailly by the door, shirt-sleeved

With braces bandoliered on grubby white

And would stare through darkened eyes, 

Black trousers flapping in a baggy breeze.

I never heard him speak a word,

But he had weird fits the others said, 

His house was filthy and he didn’t care 

And so we’d never dare retrieve a ball

From his abandoned lawn’s shaggy snare 

Or privet-held like fruit ripe to fall 

Or the hidden egg of a huge bird.

A hollowed absence set in his face 

As like a murderer he seemed to leer.

Behind his unkempt land at us who played,

So happy he was different and strange, 

Mocking his macabre frame our pleasant fear.

But he’d spent three years in a Burma camp 

Had been tormented through twelve years past,

And too late we came to understand 

How forever haunted and hunted by Japs,

He glowered out at his nightmare land 

Beyond a crumbling path

And a garden that

They said was like a jungle.