“He Was No Good At Making Bread”

                            ...BBC Radio 4,  8:30am Sunday 8 November 2009

                        Right there in the middle of carnage –

                        because that’s what it was, regulated

                        and occasionally sanctified by vigils for the dead,

                        he tried to make bread.

                        Nothing would go right, it would not rise,

                        yeast malfunctioned, flour did not respond.

                        He tried again, whenever off duty,

                        produced flour-bricks

                        for buildings no one saw.

                        Week after week he began again,

                        the same recipe not working

                        and at his vigil a comrade mentioned

                        “how he was no good at making bread.”

                        Now he is yeast to the war, proved at last,

                        but what food costs so much,

                        what discarded scraps are strewn about

                        and who washes up the mess in this dirty kitchen?

                        At home, his widow stares

                        at unused recipe books.

* Pat Jourdan's latest book is the novel Finding Out and she has appeared at the Polyverse Poetry festival (Loughborough) in July, the Sutton Hoo Poetry Festival in June and was included in the Voicing Visions Norwich Twenty Group Exhibition Spring 2009. Her website is www.patjourdan.co.uk