Bristol South Crematorium Poem by Edwin Hopper

There's crematorium smoke up the flue.
He's going to heaven is Uncle Lew.
through a magic sky of Bristol Blue,
where Concorde and Brabazon flew.

Remember Bedminster School where he grew.
The long dead girls he used to pursue.
Cheeky young shouts. Smiles. Kisses he threw.
Night bus home. Snog Sue on the Twenty Two.

Then marriage at the end of loves debut.
Bedminster Bridge making boiled bone glue.
Krauts straffing Raleigh Road in World War Two.
Bombing where they made Gold Flake Honey Dew.

A soldier in Kenya, Mogadishu.
Getting real drunk with a destroyer crew.
Then Madagascar. Vichy to subdue.
Finally peace, and Gaunts House Ration queue.

Postwar prosperity. So much to do.
Want a holiday? Then away they flew.
Got a TV, car, and credit card too.
Spending prudently. No debts to accrue.

Then Sue got bad. Her insides weren't true.
He nursed her three years. Wiped her spew.
Dressed her. Fed her. Took her to the loo.
She died. He washed her. Wiped her poo.

Grand kids had taken him to Clifton Zoo
when he had a turn. A sort of to-do.
They took him to the café for a brew.
But nothing the ambulance men could do.

Brunel's bridge. The crematorium view.
The Gorge and settings of lives old and new.
It's our world now. But we only pass through.
Ancestral ghosts slowly fade, bid adieu.

At end of life, as final bills were due,
he tried to pass to us, all that he knew.
There's crematorium smoke up the flue.
He's going to heaven is Uncle Lew.