through the ages

Through the Ages

I'm back in the streets of my childhood
no, there is no fanfare I have lived long
in a place with warmer hearts
Here, where I was born, I feel foreign 
so much so I'm not sure if I remember
another child's life
1948, when bleakness was white 
I nevertheless saw a green soot between
the house in a crack, it had been rain
but I could smell spring
At that time, a man of twenty-eight was
regarded as too old to get married
Those who made it to sixty-five were 
interviewed by the local paper and asked
how come he reached this age
We played with an empty bottle of booze
wondered if it had a secret hidden from
us, because the adults behaved funny
after drinking its liquid, sometimes men
fought, and women screamed.
The house where five families lived 
in poverty, has been modernized and
is now an office building, do the new
occupiers sense the smell of poverty
emitting from walls
I cut the shackles and fled, but my
memories often drive me back
like it or not, most of my generation has
died out, they were too modest to
appear in history books