Myatt’s Fields Park, Camberwell, SE5, London 

Poems & Prose

St James' Bell

St. James' bell    St. James' bell

he rang it often when a boy

before singing hymns    and singing well

in St. James' choir they sang for joy

jubilantly they played in Myatt's Fields

its Easter flowerbeds ablaze

with tulips, daffodils

sparks of spring that pierced dazed

Bomb battered London.

They sang for joy

Though some were fatherless, iron

In their hearts, a chill alloy

that belled pure notes in Spring

when sudden gusts shook dust from trees

drab Londoners changed their skins

donned country airs    shelled new peas.

but where they sang none sing there now

St. James' choir    St. James' bell

both made redundant    silent now

except my memory hears this knell

St. James' bell    St. James' bell

it isn't named in London's rhymes

but I'll not return to Camberwell

now St. James' bell no longer chimes

*

One Day, Prévert

 

One day 

He walked in a park

And the first sight was

A board of Bylaws

And the times of open and close

And the sight of this

And suddenly smelling the flowers...

 

When he was young

He read the Iliad and the Odyssey

Borrowed these books from the library

Carried them home through the park

Past flower beds, tennis courts

Through a long leafy tunnel of sycamore trees

Meeting Miriam and her friends

Who knowing no history

Seemed so much younger than he

 

And did not Helen tease warriors...

And so on through the seasons

Until one day 

Finding himself alone

Like a thrush on a lawn

Hearing the earth move

 

And if ever you too

Should find yourself alone

Hearing the earth move

Do not move too quickly

Towards Helen, or Miriam

If you see them nearby

 

Do not dissolve the moment in motion.

 

*

From A Work in Progress. 3

Richard Aldington published his book debunking T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, in 1955, a year after my father died, when I was ten.  I had a job delivering newspapers in the morning then and already an avid reader of Atticus in the Daily Mirror and familiar with the headlines on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Sketch, and The Telegraph.  If anybody took The Times, it would have been Dr. Bronowski, a notable recipient on my Camberwell, South London route who lived where Knatchbull Road intersected McDowall Road and whose address was the first delivery on my route.

I went to the newsagents early each morning to pick up the stack of newspapers I'd carry in a sack slung from on my shoulder.  Sometimes, I'd wait while the newsagent finished assembling my deliveries, marking the address on each newspaper and I'd have time to read the headlines on the papers for sale spread out on the counter. Aldington’s revelations were headline news.  The dead hero Lawrence of Arabia was a legend.  Schoolboys my age knew of him.  Winston Churchill was one of his biggest admirers.  Aldington pulled Lawrence off his pedestal and among other revelations exposed him as a likely homosexual, at a time, 1955, when homosexuality could be cause for imprisonment.  This generated much newspaper commentary but also aired the topic of homosexuality, something I'd been unaware of until that morning my mother got into a discussion about the news about Lawrence with our next-door neighbor and abruptly changed the subject when our neighbor, a French lady, said that she didn't think homosexuality should be a crime.  My ten-year old ears perked up.  I already had a vague notion to beware of men hanging about near public toilets. Was that what it was called?  Once, when I was smaller, I’d gone into a public toilet in a public park and a man had wanted to help me undo my zip.  

When in my teenage years I started reading the literary pages and came across mention of Aldington as a poet, I remembered his name because of that controversy.  H.D. was not in vogue in those days.  That she and Aldington had once been passionate lovers totally escaped me.  I was already desperately in love with a girl who lived in a house that took the Daily Sketch.  And I had discovered T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock and suddenly realized I would write poetry.

When Glenn Hughes gave his lecture in 1958, after the April release of Ezra Pound, I was almost fourteen, working a paper round I'd taken over from Philip, my older brother.   He was three years older than I and he had preceded me at school where I had many of the same teachers.  His name was on the Honors Board.  Our father had been a soldier.  We had his regimental book on the history of his regiment.  He'd written inside the flyleaf a very short history of his jobs before joining the Army.  He'd once been fired from a factory in Dagenham for fighting.  Besides his book there was a sharpshooter's medal from Bisley.  There were boars’ tusks and brass trays brought back from India where he'd once served.  He'd been at Dunkirk.  All we knew of the war was that he'd been in the rearguard and that he'd come home from France on a sailboat.  My brother was conceived after Dunkirk.  Then my father fought in North Africa where he was blown up by a mine in Tunisia, lost the sight of an eye and had to wear a special boot on his left foot thereafter.

I remember walking beside my father one morning.  I was five or six years old.  It's the only time I remember walking with him.  He was easy to keep up with.  He had been in the Royal Fusiliers (City of London) Regiment.  He may have had a walking stick.  I remember him telling me to keep on his left side where he could see me as we crossed the road.  We were going to the lock-up garage that he had just rented in preparation for buying a car before he learned his injuries denied him a driving license.  He'd been on the garage waiting list for ages.  We already had a motorcycle with a sidecar.  That was kept in a railed-off archway under the railway lines near Camberwell Green.  When the Southern Rail trains passed overhead there was a terrific rumbling sound.  I saw a big rat there once.  The rented garage was closer about a half mile from where we lived.  There were several bombsites from the war, where houses had been demolished, along the way.  

Our route took us past an Army barracks.   The main gate was some way from the busy main road.  A detachment of soldiers marching in rows suddenly came into sight going towards the barracks.  They were marching in the road carrying a flag.  Not the Union Jack but a regimental flag.  My father stopped as the soldiers passed, faced the road and stood to attention, taking off his hat as the flag passed by.  Other people just kept on walking.  An officer appreciated my father's gesture.  He called out something like:

  "Thank you, sir.  It's good to see someone showing respect."

*

The Ballad of Calais Gate

This ballad spans the many years

That the Londoner tramped the Street...

Listened to her many tales

Who knew so many by their feet

A widow lived by Myatt's Fields

In Calais Gate, off Cormont Road

Her life was bleak as week by week

She bore a heavy load

Three kids were left her when Esaw

Died, two boys and a fair-haired girl

One could walk, two could run

The Street could tell you which one lied

About hiding apples in a jug

Or who drank the Christmas brandy

Which one broke his mother's heart

Which one brought her candy

They lived in roomy Calais Gate

The best flats for miles around

So well-built that from outside

You couldn't hear a sound

She wished they had stayed in Brixton

Where a motor bike was class

Not found themselves amongst

The motorized top brass

But homes for wounded heroes

Were provided at low rent

So Esaw and Mabel got

A flat from heaven sent...

Servants bells that the children rang

When they pretended to be swank

Lots of room for silver spoons

And trees outside, not streets that stank

Home from the wars the soldiers came

Voted Labor into power

Like Esaw they tuned their Nortons'

And pretended to be squires

Uncle Bill and Auntie Doris

Lived an ivy-covered block away

Told the kids about submarines

Held them in their sway

Now William owned an Anglia

Which he drove with leather gloves

He parked it in the City

If you please...

In the war he'd been a warden

Patrolling Calais Gate

Keeping watch for fires on rooftops

From next to Mabel's grate

Now his wife patrolled in turn

Looking for her man...

As Sergeant Esaw once looked for him

When he heard they were holding hands

The street had seen it coming

Seen it develop over time

Watched Esaw, Mabel, Bill and Doris

Acting out their mime

Poor Esaw didn't last long

He had a stroke one New Year's Eve

Then Bill resumed his visits

Fooled the kids with make-believe

But Doris wasn't fooled at all

Nor were the kids for long

She paced outside their windows in the cold...

Then the street knew what was wrong

The kids were growing up fast

To Bill they didn't take too kind

Especially when Doris

Accosted them outside

This tale went on for many years

Before the play was done...

And the world of childish make-believe

Had several lives undone

Now that is what divorce is for

The Street told the children primly

It is wrong for a man to womanize

Before his wife so openly

Some good advice I give to you

Who live in the world of faces

It is the type of tread a person has

Leads to such bad consequences.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026