Angela Graham

WOOLWORTH’S EMPLOYEE, REID STREET, BELFAST, 1965     

My father — stockroom-man, Store Fifty-nine —
Knew how Christmas ought to look,
Loading emptied shelves afresh each day
With shiny things; with holly colours;
All that brought the outdoors safely in —
Electric stars, snow in a globe 
And plastic icicles. He could afford 
Red tape and Blanco whitening.
Voilà! A wintry window, many-paned,
Its left-hand corners blizzarded.
My father wanted us to feel secure.
Here we are, in the flash-photograph
He took through the window from outside; my teethy play-along
Bleached by the bulb-pop, my mother’s hair
Combed long for effect. His family. His idyll. 
Some of it was fake. Not all.
At least he tried to make a Christmas for us.
His high-point, a Stewart’s grocery manager
But, pro-trade union and the wrong religion,
Soon purged. A Merchant Navy 
Cook before that; formerly a steward, a cabin boy.
A life of feed, fetch, carry.
Coronary. Just short of fifty-nine.

Angela Graham is a Welsh-speaking film-maker and writer from Belfast. This poem is part of a current project on Place and Displacement for which she gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her poetry has appeared widely and her short story collection A City Burning is due from Seren Books in 2020. She is finishing a novel on the politics of language in Northern Ireland.