Names by Michael Rosen

When we talk about sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers when it comes to my dad there’s always a place where there’s a bit of a space. It’s a gap with no one there. It’s a father, a dad, over there somewhere.

When we talk about sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers and we get to the sisters and brothers of my father’s father he shuts his eyes and says he’d rather not talk about that.

But we ask for their names and where they are where do they live and is it far? And bit by bit he tells us their names none of them here there was a war, he explains.

And we sit and we think about us sitting here how sisters and brothers could just disappear but because Mum and Dad were in a different place they could stay here where they were safe my mother and father were able to survive and here we are now and we’re all alive