The Graduates

  If I chose children they’d know
  stories of the old country, the place
  we never left. I swear

  I remember no ship
  slipping from the dock,
  no cluster of hurt, proud family

  waving till they were wee
  as china milkmaids
  on a mantlepiece,

  but we have surely gone,
  and must knock
  with brass kilted pipers

  the doors to the old land;
  we emigrants of no farewell
  who keep our bit language

  in jokes and quotes;
  our working knowledge
  of coal-pits, fevers, lost

  like the silver bangle I lost
  at the shows one Saturday
  tried to conceal, denied

  but they’re not daft.
  And my bright, monoglot bairns
  will discover, misplaced

  among the bookshelves,
  proof, rolled in a red tube:
  my degrees, a furled sail, my visa



	The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity. Our privacy statement. Our Freedom of Information Publications Scheme.

	© British Council




	Developed and hosted by Artlogic Media Ltd London.