Having been centred rather than aligned left, the point of the acrostic, reading PORTSMOUTH down the side, is made less apparent. It doesn't have a title because it would have been implicit in the poem but it's been given one anyway, though not by me. Thus, as I'm sure others have learnt in the past, if you want to retain complete artistic control over your work, never let it out of your sight.
But it's fine and, familiarity bringing with it some comfort, it seems a better poem than I first thought it was.
It's been here before but if Radio 3 can repeat Proms, I'm sure I can repeat this,
Perhaps
it was my fate to be brought here
Or
a sequence of chances that lined up,
Returning
me back time and time again
To
where I was at home as refugee.
So,
thirty-five years later, here I am,
Made
native by belonging nowhere else,
Otherwise
still a stranger to myself
Under
the Guildhall clock or by the shore
The
gunboats would depart from into mist,
History
theirs to make, ours to pass by.
