If you’ve got cold feet, you can’t write a poem,
So I find some white ankle socks in a drawer.
I wear them with pleasure and wriggle my toes.
But oh, how we hated them when we were four-

-teen and longing for high heels and nylons,
Our breasts and our furious hormones concealed
By box-pleated gymslips which never wore out.
But our blossoming piles of hair revealed

We were ready for sex. The year? Forty-five
And the end of the War. An exam year for us,
And a Labour triumph and victory parades.
They switched on the lights, and we went on the bus

At night to town. My eight-year-old brother,
Who knew only blackout, including a raid
Which killed a family over the road, spoke up:
“It’s like fairyland!” he said.

Now we never see darkness, the wars are elsewhere.
I’m eighty, a warm-footed woman who cocks
A snook at the daftness of youth – and the girl
With my name who hated her white ankle socks.