AN OLD POSTCARD: 'DID YOU HEAR WE ARE LEAVING BIRMINGHAM?'

 Did You Hear We Are Leaving Birmingham?

Unable to pay the rent, a hurried family vacates 

Its home under cover of the night’s foul dark,

Once the invasive streetlights have been doused,

And stealing away between looming tenements stark:

Leaving Birmingham in a moonlight flit…

The sturdy buildings rise, the folks seem insignificant,

Yet they must feel like they are taking centre-stage;

Nowhere to go maybe, embarrassed, distraught,

Symptomatic of a bygone age:

Leaving Birmingham in a moonlight flit…

In seeming obeisance the wife leans beneath a crib,

In likely shame the husband lugs a grandfather clock

Which reveals and strikes the time of the night

And places his family’s predicament firmly in the dock:

Leaving Birmingham in a moonlight flit…

A tray is ludicrously tied to the pack-dog’s tail,

For like the cat, the pooch is used for carrying;

The son grapples with a table, a caged bird hangs from a besom broom, 

For they’re escaping the bailiffs and there’s no point in tarrying:

Leaving Birmingham in a moonlight flit…

There’s a box and baskets, even a chair on the bairn’s pram,

There’s a cupboard, a carpet-bag and a kettle is clutched by the woman in fear;

This unfortunate family of perhaps a clerk in a suit

Is leaving Birmingham, did you hear?

In a desperate, shaming, horrifying moonlight flit… 

Pete Ray

A Cynicus postcard, posted in 1911, from the Mary B Harding book ‘Comic and Novelty Postcards of Birmingham’, published by Maxam…

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