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!