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My parents are over at the moment. They’ve brought with them a pile of boxes containing, well, my entire childhood. From Action Man to football programmes, teddy bear to school reports (my favourite being the headmaster’s comment “sloppy, scruffy, untidy, shambling along - yes he gives precisely this impression around the school”), they wanted to know what I wanted to keep. Not a great deal is the answer, but I did uncover a literary gem buried deep in my past. It’s a poem I wrote when I was eleven years old. If this had got out before the selection of the new poet laureate, I’d have definitely been in the running and worth a punt at the bookies. Eleven years old, yet such insight, such an understanding of the human condition in a world gone mad.

Folks, I give you this masterpiece with my blessing. It has an important message - go and disseminate it among your peers and the world might just be a better place for it. Enjoy.

THE EMU

I can imagine in some other world
Far ahead in time
The earth was the victim of war, it lay desolate
Only the Emu stirred

The earth, I imagine, was in ruin
No human survived
Victims of the bitter nuclear war
Amazingly the Emu still lived

Running. Running. Always running.
Frightened. What had once been Africa
Was now a mass of smoke and radiation
It knew it didn’t have long…

EPILOGUE
I think the Emu miraculously survived.
This, I hope, will never happen.
It may be inevitable.
I don’t know.

Charlie Connelly, 1982