Exiting Liverpool, on a whim, eastwards,

parallel to the river and then across

the Mersey Gateway Bridge – not as usual

through the Kingsway Tunnel – I took a wrong turn.

I found myself in Mossley Hill driving past

my old hall of residence. Another

wrong turn took me down Menlove Avenue.

A tour bus idled outside 121.

‘Though I know we’ve seen this place before,

someone keeps on moving the door’. Passing

the Jewish cemetery on Hillfoot Road

and a sign for John Lennon Airport

told me I was on the right road for home.

As I drove onto the Gateway Bridge I thought

of what I had learned in Academe’s Groves:

that Aristotle knew how many teeth

a horse has, and Bertolt Brecht was a fan

of Rudyard Kipling. Beneath me the river

was bright, and stretched like a silver lining.

I remembered, one damp November night,

walking from my lodgings near the Art School

down to Victoria Street’s sorting office

to catch the last post to faraway you

with my regular letter of love and longing.

Near Mathew Street, three working class teenage girls –

thirteen, fourteen, still in their school coats – sang

‘The world is treating me bad, misery…

I’ll remember all the little things we’ve done…’

I wondered then when and how I would use

such a piece of theatre.