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THE
ARCADE
Under the lamp, faux Art Nouveau and late,
a
map of the harbour where, in earlier days,
you
enjoyed an easier life. Far
from it now,
you
raise from the parallels: streets and arcades,
one
in especial, with factory gates.
And
you
paint
with bifocals bicycles and trams,
Dürer-like
hatchings-in of a sky and roofs
with
microcosmic finesse.
And
you descend
under
the jaundiced watts and the false pearl
of
night-owl light into a scene half there,
once.
Half invented.
Men
in dour
overcoats,
dogged, cycle-clipped, the sky
still,
an edged marquetry, but hatched in paper.
You
enter an inner light, the ivory polish
of
the one place that mattered, the Arcade.
And
then its bookshop, where from volumes you,
idly,
intense, picked on half-sentences.
Then…
from
Queen Street, from Arundel Street,
from
Commercial Road, Unicorn Road, the air
was
bleached with air-raid sirens and you
sought
the nearest shelter with a Beano.
Alan
Marshfield
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