Radio Times

What’s  On

(the programmes are authentic for the day I was born)

I’ve come from the womb

and Henry Wentof, tenor sings

on gramophone records.

I sleep and suckle

while Let’s Be Gay is on the air

and for my mother

The Housewife in War Time.

In the afternoon there’s Kill That Squander Bug,

in the evening Youth Must Have Its Swing

and at sunset Valentine Dyall

reading Milton’s Lycidas.

(Mother, beware of the blind fury

who slits the thin-spun life.)

           

Last comes Vy Benson And Her Girls’ Band

and the midnight news

and that rounds off

my first day in the world.