Sitting in Mr Billy’s, cappuccino drunk
I watch the Golowan flag unfurl and roll
over the discount furniture store.
An elegant lizard design ruffled
as Hurricane Hector creeps to shore.
Caffine restores and clears the brain’s funk;
mind having been clogged with too many poets
read too superficially, such a rapid tour:-
Akhmatova, Garcia Lorca, Neruda
-several more.
all read in translation with growing piles
of biographies-Akhmatova’s by Elaine Feinstein
and just recovered, after much searching,
Pablo Neruda’s by Adam Feinstein.
The latter faintly and quaintly inscribed to ” Jessie G-
My passion in my life” signed Den
with five kisses -a bargain at three pounds forty nine.
Although I don’t know these signatories.
I remember the Sixties, when a certain Jessie G occupied
my thoughts and feelings.
As the shoppers come and go- not thinking, I think
of Michelangelo,
I long for the enigmatic winds that energised us all-
when Co-Operative with its cheap and vivid green awning
was not just a shop.
As the street fills with delivery vans,
I long for the fervour again to discover,
Sous les paves, la plage!
