THE BALLOON

Poster for 'Le Ballon Rouge'

In 1956, French film-maker Albert Lamorisse directed a short but enchanting film entitled ‘Le Ballon Rouge’ (‘The Red Balloon’), which featured a small Parisian boy (played by the director’s own son, Pascal) who encountered a large red balloon that seemed to have a life and will of its own. Tragically, a gang of bullies saw the boy with it, pursued them, and finally burst the balloon, only for a host of other balloons all over Paris to break free of their strings and rescue the boy by lifting him up into the sky and carrying him safely away on a breathtaking flight above the rooftops of the city. I saw this poignant but delightful film as a child, when it was shown on British television during the late 1960s, and its magic remained with me long afterwards, giving me the idea for a children’s poem about a balloon, but written as if it were almost a living entity.

THE BALLOON

Like an animated bubble
Bobbing gaily through the sky,
Nodding happily to cloudlets
As it gently dances by.

Spinning swiftly o’er the meadows,
Just a merry, bouncing clown,
Bowing joyfully to Heaven
As it spirals up and down.

Soon it whirls amidst the woodlands,
Here a gaudy, twirling sphere
Rolling slowly down the branches
Like a bright, gigantic tear.

Then some splinters stroke it softly
As around the trees it wends,
But their fond embrace is fatal,
And its life is at an end –

Bursting loudly into pieces;
But, as hours so swiftly pass,
Who will miss a merry bubble
Lying dead amongst the grass?

YESTERDAY'S STREET

My street of Yesterday, the subject of this poem, is a side street in Wednesbury, in the West Midlands, England, where my grandparents and great-aunts once lived in a small but lovely old house, and where I spent many happy days every year throughout my childhood and teenage years. Although they are all long departed now, whenever I walk down this street today – whether in reality or only in my mind – I never see it as it is, but only as it was – back in those far-off youthful days when it was home to those dear folk who loved me so much.

YESTERDAY'S STREET

Along that strangely silent street
Of Yesterday I strolled,
Where humble ragworts gaily tossed
Their joyful heads of gold
Above the gleaming wisps of grass
That peered through pavements worn,
Beneath the silken spiderwebs
Suspended old and torn
Between the ruddy bricks and slabs
Of broken tumbling walls -
Where oft I watched lithe centipedes
Laboriously crawl
On countless pairs of trembling legs,
As sparrows chattered long,
Or breathlessly in torrents poured
Out eager, scolding songs.

For here, a thriving neighbourhood
Survived through two World Wars,
And from its ceaseless gossiping
There never seemed a pause.
But all things end and soon are lost,
As progress marches on,
For Future has no time for Past,
Its ancient dreams far gone.
And as I watch, a pang vibrates
Within my beating heart,
That all my childhood dreams of Life
Should all too quickly part
Like curtains drifting back through Time,
Till, fading from my sight,
They pass fore’er from Memory
In dismal, clouded flight.

And as the leaves around my feet
In rustling dances whirl,
A tear runs slowly down my cheek
Like some reluctant pearl,
But as I gaze, my memories
Flood quickly back once more.
I see again a tiny house,
And watch its open door
Swing to, as phantoms from my past
Continue on their way,
All unaware of future worlds,
Of other, unborn days,
As like a rushing stream of ghosts
Each vision flashes by,
Recapturing their long-lost forms
Within my watching eye –

Like characters from fairy tales,
Now distant, far, and gone.
For like a living carousel
Our world moves ever on,
Till one fine day we’ll see again
Those kingdoms of our past,
And then, like they, as phantoms we
Forever more shall last,
Amidst the world that we knew best,
For all must fade and die,
And pass at last beyond the clear
Blue shadow of the sky.
And as I turn, a last farewell
Upon my ear is cast,
For still my dreams are haunted by
The murmurs of my past.