stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 19731
[post_author] => 23
[post_date] => 2018-12-19 16:35:11
[post_date_gmt] => 2018-12-19 16:35:11
[post_content] => Germany’s war was waged, we had to make it ours.
It began then, an almost park given to us: a façade
of what it was not, Huts, a family of a hundred
hundred people to trust secrets to;
we began in quiet
and voice never defied us in six – many – years;
the war, at times, did.
In love letters they told us the sites of rendezvous:
every morning, codes that could never be broken;
nights, with those going nowhere:
days, bided away
in uniforms and discipline, by tables – laden with
sheets, and codes, and messages, and more codes –
and by people, from everywhere, with dancesteps
and pints – with more codes; even dances made up
of Roman numerals:
Bletchley was home; home
had alienated: we danced with people never looking
at them, they never knew where we learnt those steps.
The place wasn’t made up of words anymore, we
preferred silence; the death of a dog on the street was
hardly anyone’s concern – we had been busy
counting humans.
On the radio, Churchill:
We shall go on to the end … we shall never
surrender. In the Huts, we knew that people died –
and that wouldn’t be in vain.
Swimmers had been killing the mermaids, but then,
Turing in Hut 8 had been successful in decrypting
the naval Enigma messages; –
the Germans didn’t know
soon, then it changed to Tunny ciphers. Another
year, the answers were found again.
We had been working for the end; it took some
time, but it had begun.
[post_title] => From Bletchley With Love
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => from-bletchley-with-love
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2018-12-19 16:35:11
[post_modified_gmt] => 2018-12-19 16:35:11
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => http://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/?post_type=poems&p=19731
[menu_order] => 0
[post_type] => poems
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
[meta_data] => stdClass Object
(
[wpcf-published-in] =>
[wpcf-date-published] => 2018
[wpcf-summary-description] => This poem is the third-prize winner in the Bletchley Park poetry challenge on Young Poets Network (YPN).
So Mayer, who wrote and judged the challenge, said, “Written in a quicksilver voice that speaks collectively for the many who worked at the Park, this poem samples the oral histories collected by the museum to create a living tapestry dense with the intensity of the work undertaken and how it fed and bled into extra-curricular pastimes, and how the pressure of secrecy continues to shape Bletchley’s narrative.”
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 3rd prize, Bletchley Park challenge
[wpcf_pr_belongs] =>
)
[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 19733
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Jayant Kashyap
[slug] => jayant-kashyap
[content] => Jayant is the third-prize winner in the Bletchley Park challenge on Young Poets Network.
)
)
stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 19733
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => Jayant Kashyap
[slug] => jayant-kashyap
[content] => Jayant is the third-prize winner in the Bletchley Park challenge on Young Poets Network.
)
Germany’s war was waged, we had to make it ours.
It began then, an almost park given to us: a façade
of what it was not, Huts, a family of a hundred
hundred people to trust secrets to;
we began in quiet
and voice never defied us in six – many – years;
the war, at times, did.
In love letters they told us the sites of rendezvous:
every morning, codes that could never be broken;
nights, with those going nowhere:
days, bided away
in uniforms and discipline, by tables – laden with
sheets, and codes, and messages, and more codes –
and by people, from everywhere, with dancesteps
and pints – with more codes; even dances made up
of Roman numerals:
Bletchley was home; home
had alienated: we danced with people never looking
at them, they never knew where we learnt those steps.
The place wasn’t made up of words anymore, we
preferred silence; the death of a dog on the street was
hardly anyone’s concern – we had been busy
counting humans.
On the radio, Churchill:
We shall go on to the end … we shall never
surrender. In the Huts, we knew that people died –
and that wouldn’t be in vain.
Swimmers had been killing the mermaids, but then,
Turing in Hut 8 had been successful in decrypting
the naval Enigma messages; –
the Germans didn’t know
soon, then it changed to Tunny ciphers. Another
year, the answers were found again.
We had been working for the end; it took some
time, but it had begun.