This is one of the great public, civic
spaces of the world – the museum,
the library, the gallery, the court house,
Wellington’s column, the Steble fountain,
the Empire Theatre, Lime Street Station,
St George’s Hall, St John’s Gardens, vistas
of the river, the Wirral, the Welsh hills…
During the worst raid of the Liverpool Blitz
the museum was set ablaze – a bomb,
one of so many, supposedly
for the docks, that razed history, neighbourhoods.
My grandmother, Liverpool Welsh – who took tea
with Buffalo Bill and was offered a place
in a music hall chorus line but refused,
being the eldest of thirteen, her Da
at sea and her Ma at the sherry –
described to me in detail many times
the natural history collection:
stuffed walruses, condors and Don Pedro,
a retired Barnum and Bailey elephant –
all immolated, and washed away.
While mummy, daddy, grandma see ‘Evita’,
she and I make our way to the museum,
holding hands. I talk about history,
public and personal – my father,
a stranger, a London Jew, in transit
that May Saturday, joining a line
of desperate buckets. She listens –
in my company a serious,
concerned seven year old – and asks if fires
can ever be put out. ‘Yes, always…
eventually,’ I say. We decide
to explore as many floors as we can
from the top – space, dinosaur poo, bugs
but have no time for masks and totems –
and pause, me for rest, her to draw,
before, leaving a moment for ice cream,
we walk in the dusk, past the statues,
up the incline to the theatre crowds.
Note: first published April 2017.
By David Selzer