Oh, Where Have You Come From, My Blue-Eyed Boy?

I come from Malmo

Its low gentle farmland

Mudflats by the Øresund

I come from beneath the cavernous sky

Of the Lincolnshire fens

I come from the tops of Cork’s raging cliffs

And sea-carved bays

I come from coal-stained valleys that cut

Through Merthyr’s coal-drained hills

To Cardiff’s terraced streets

I come from the Blitzed houses of Portsmouth

And its wartime volunteer committees

I come from the smog of The Smoke

And Maidenhead’s Thames

I come from a dormitory town laid out

South of the Downs

 

I come from so many places

Across such a long time

Can I still trust my sources?

I don’t know anymore

 

So, where have I come from

This blue-eyed boy?

 

n.b. NaPoWriMo 2019: Day 11 prompt is origins. As ever I owe Bob Dylan credit and an apology for twisting his lyrics from “Hard Rain”

CLP 11thApril 2019

3 Comments

  1. Shuku Li says:
    15th April 2019 at 22:13

    I really love the geography of this – how all of the places leave their mark and make us into who we are.

    I’m so behind, my god, but here is my not-quite-origins poem (I went with deviation instead)
    https://shukuen.blogspot.com/2019/04/glopowrimo-day-11-deviant.html

    1. Christopher Perry says:
      15th April 2019 at 23:20

      From the lands of my ancestors

      1. Shuku Li says:
        15th April 2019 at 23:24

        Ancestry is definitely an interesting thing. There’s a legend in my mother’s family that some of her ancestors were Jewish; I didn’t actually believe her until I stumbled upon some research which stated that in her ancestral region of China, there *were* reputed to have been Jewish settlers. We’ve never yet been able to prove or disprove it, mind…

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