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White scarf striped suit silk corsage bold print tight boots squiggled strides youth quake Nova Young Idea same bar new girl different year Lord John Birdcage Hung on You seaside stripper rose tattoo Bazaar Biba dolly-birds postcard implies saucy words Cue-Man lover count to ten put on the shades and start again
There’s a dance going on in the dark above our heads, men pressing women against laundered suits, a girl’s surprised to find her older partner dances better than boys, a woman leaves imprinted lips staining the bar-tender’s milky cheek.
Above us, the burned-out pier against evening’s Guinness-black curtain, where feet shuffle in rhythm (a few toes getting stepped on), and maybe this close stepping’s what we’re made for, hands tight against gabardine or georgette clad backs. It may be the sea, or the dancers’ suggestive whispering: At last, at last, at last …
Above our heads, pier-bones lost to night, where phantoms clutch each other. Only the sea? Or a woman breathing to her partner, before kissing him: I wish tonight would last, would last … would last …
Earl of Rochester’s ghost stalks moody by the Thames tonight, rake-hell sun quick setting, spilling tallow light, and he passes softly through us as if we’re not all there, river breezes sighing through silk hair.
The Earl of Rochester’s spectre misremembers that last whore, can’t recollect her face recalls a slamming door, tender billowed sleeves fill with October’s chill, as he wonders if she’s waiting for him still …
joins a Saraband of once-were-libertines, cold movers and dead shakers, pox-patched might have beens, dandinis, foppish dreamers, maskers with a past, and wonders why it is sensation never lasts?
Earl of Rochester’s shade stands single once again, entering a bar, neon flickering like rain, catch him staring through me as if I wasn’t there, as though the hand of an old love was tousling his hair … Neon’s returned to normal, as he’s by the Thames again, (sense him glancing backwards, as if in sudden pain) perhaps his grave’s been stomped on, made him suddenly aware, slight as river mist, he’ll just evaporate on air, and once angels and once demons might sink to rest at last, on the sequinned river surface and consign all to the past, yet, as if she sat beside me I’m suddenly aware of his last whore gently whispering a prayer …
His playboy presence was a flickering flame, dazzling with diamond-bracelet smiles. GABLE MOBBED BY FANS WHO TRAVELLED MILES the papers said we put New York to shame, but Mansfield fans set up a waiting game and got him signing photographs in piles. Fire-lipped typists, abandoning their files mobbed him for copies of his well-heeled name. ‘Clark, over here, Clark’ – Still that refrain clings, ‘mi Mam thinks you’re the dishiest man alive!’ Still I see him, standing hand in pocket, as if Mansfield was glamorous Palm Springs and not a place to make his spirits dive.
I keep him like a picture in a locket.
for Martyn
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