Run The Film Backwards - Sydney Carter

This is a poem that all of us here in Bedford love. It is written by a man named Sydney Carter, and although it is already on our website, we thought it only appropriate to share it here too.
We hope you enjoy!

Run The Film Backwards

When I was eighty-seven

they took me from my coffin;

they found a flannel nightshirt

for me to travel off in.

All innocent and toothless

I used to lie in bed,

still trailing clouds of glory

from the time when I was dead.

The cruel age of sixty-five

put paid to my enjoyment;

I had to wear a bowler hat

and go to my employment.

But at the age of sixty

I found I had a wife.

And that explains the children.

(I’d wondered all my life.)

I kept on growing younger

and randier and stronger

Till at the age of twenty-one

I had a wife no longer.

With mini-skirted milkmaids

I frolicked in the clover;

The cuckoo kept on calling me

Until my teens were over.

Then algebra and cricket

And sausages a-cooking,

And puffing at a cigarette

When teacher wasn’t looking.

The trees are getting taller,

The streets are getting wider.

My mother is the world to me;

And soon I’ll be inside her.

And now, it is so early,

There’s nothing I can see.

Before the world, or after?

Wherever can I Be?

Credits to: Sydney Carter