A Month in the Past

(The photograph accompanying this poem is of Crown Street, St Ives in Cambridgeshire, taken in the 1880s).

I sometimes think I’d like to live a month in the past
When the pace of life was slower, less hurried, not so fast.
There were horses and coaches and cobbled streets,
And unattended boxes and dirt at your feet.
When news took ages to travel; I think people were calmer.
Cattle sold at the market by the local farmers.
Visitors from afar stayed in coaching inns
Drinking various beers, whisky and gin.
Many buildings still stand: Victorian terraced side streets
Where once there were gas lamps, and back street beerhouses to greet
The weary and tired at the end of the day
When the market stalls were packed away.
Were things calmer without twenty four hour news?
Perhaps less to worry about- busy days and then booze.
No mobile phones to carry and check in every place
The only way of communicating was face to face.
I suppose I’m imagining some sort of Dickensian paradise,
There was poverty of course; conditions weren’t always nice.
Yes there were slums and poor sanitation
But I wonder whether lack of information
Meant that people lived in ignorant bliss
Close communities not worrying about “this” and “this.”
Drinking dirty water, accepting disease
Yet being at peace with their minds at ease.
Probably I’m looking at an idealised picture.
Many were poor, yet were their lives richer?
Back to back houses, roads unpaved
(though the rich had servants and chambermaids)
I don’t know.  Maybe I wouldn’t like it-
Cold dark streets at night with the gas lamps lit.
Maybe the conditions would leave me aghast.
What would it be like to live a month in the past?

MDC