Forty Years Ago: A Poem

I wrote this poem in 2005, in a rented bedroom in a family home in Stillorgan, which was probably the nadir of my fortunes-- or at least, felt like it. I was obviously still suffering from the "end of history" vibe which 9/11 was supposed to have dispelled.

The critique of modern life is quite unfocussed but I do like the lines: "Time is an air-conditioned office now, and history an infinite replay." I could even claim that this is prophetic given the horror of limitless office space expressed by the film The Backrooms (which I haven't yet seen), and also the now-widespread observation that pop culture is just regurgitating the past indefinitely.

My notion that this "end of history" would be a post-ideology, post-deprivation, post-compulsion landscape of endless consumerism couldn't have been more wrong, though. I didn't foresee Covid lockdowns, the development of political correctness beyond purely negative speech-codes towards demands for positive affirmation, Trump, Brexit, and all that. Little did I realize there were a whole load of new taboos, privations, and social upheavals on the way. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that these are often more welcome to me than the stagnation of the "end of history" that I feared-- although I'm not saying that's a healthy reaction.

I don't think this a great poem. I think I've written about ten good poems in more than thirty years of writing poetry. It's not as bad as others.

One of the weaknesses of my poems has always been the use of characters and settings that seemed clear to me, but that really weren't. In this poem, a young man is watching old movies and TV shows, behind closed curtains, alone.

Forty Years Ago

Behind closed curtains, forty years ago
Fills up the screen in black and white.
Oh, what he wouldn't give to grow
Amongst the craters the Luftwaffe made,
To be a baby of the Blitz! But night
Has fallen now on history's parade.

He watches mini-skirted women jive
The pale young hero cursing TV sets
And package holidays. To be alive
When time was like the weather! When the news
Was like a story! Now nobody gets
Excited about class, no-one has views

About the Common Market, no-one talks
About how things were different in my day.
That's gone the way of Cromwell and Guy Fawkes.
Time is an air-conditioned office now
And history an infinite replay.
There's nothing left the world will not allow;

No rationing; no walking half a mile
To hear a radio, no being called
To spend two years in khaki, no big trial
For dirty books; at last nobody cares.
Curse on the telly, no-one is appalled;
Puncture your face with studs and no-one stares.

Nostalgic for small-mindedness, he feeds
On scenes of caps and queues and kitchen-sinks
And every month the whole damned lot recedes;
That guy who played the miner's son just died
And she's a Dame, that mini-skirted minx
In this last room where history can hide
He lives a past unseen, self-mummified.