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
