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Borough

REVELATIONS

Marooned for three years, Ben Gunn was

‘sore for Christian diet’. He dreamt of cheese,

toasted mostly.

Doctor Livesey always had about him

a piece of Parmesan in a snuffbox.

When he heard about the dreams, he said,

‘Well, that’s for Ben Gunn!’

But we never find out if the ‘half mad maroon’ savours

the King of Cheeses.

Maybe he eats it and thinks of Cheddar.

I was walking up the Farnham Road in Slough.

I passed an off-licence run by Sikhs,

a general store selling Halal meat

and a Caribbean take-away.

In front of me, a youth  was walking.

From a pocket in his blouson,

he took a banana.

He meticulously peeled, gently ate it.

The empty peel hung from his left hand.

We walked.

When would he drop it, cast it to the gutter, fling it at me?

He stopped –

and placed the peel in a bin provided by the Borough.


On the end wall of the erstwhile refectory

of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie

– which is merely a stone’s throw

from where a mob of  Milanese women

mutilated Mussolini

and hung the corpse from a lamp post –

hangs Da Vinci’s ‘The Last  Supper’.

One day, a woman from Woodside, Queens,

asked the guide three timely questions:

‘These are Jewish men, right?’

‘This is the Passover, yes?’

‘So, where is the matzos?’

NOT ANYTHING TO SHOW MORE FAIR

'Westminster Bridge', Canaletto, 1746



A league from Hoole is Westminster Bridge,

Ellesmere Port. Like Wordsworth, I composed on it.

The brick replica replaced the level

crossing, after the Borough had built

the Civic Hall in the boom time: Shell, Vauxhall,

overspill estates – a working class city.

Jobs went, the bridge stayed, no one made jokes.

The high street, strait, terraced, encompassed

all: Big Mac and sometimes on Sundays

Russian sailors window-shopping. Before me,

framed by the TSB and the Loyalist

Club lay the M53: beyond,

the Mersey – silent, still.