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.
By David Selzer