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Ten years of sorrow, not conspicuous, he worked, met girls, but then it seemed someone had left a radio forever on across the street, not noticed in the press of talk or newfound love but always there. At last the only thing he heard: a drone that took his days, then her, then every prayer.
The Thames still weaves its silver threads beneath the throbbing helicopters; they want more soldiers and the daughters of Sunday idlers skip, it needs
a steady beat to dodge the rope, it needs a steady heart to watch the double-blades returning catch the Greenwich sun. My horoscope
predicts an easy week. I fold the paper over and so meet our leader’s endless gaze. It’s sweet
to watch the tour boats pass, to dip among used books. I am too old to nurse this rage. The children skip.
The books that haven’t sold a copy in one year become dead stock; we pry them out, the shelves must work, these texts achieve a bin
or distant warehouse (something said about ‘tax purposes’). We ease them from our lists, just rarely stopping with a flare of doubt
beside a pile of Irish dramatists or some biography that tells you how an East End life was lived: ‘with joy, with fists,
with heart…’ Perhaps we’ll keep a few, we know we shouldn’t but a flicker of affection towards an author’s photograph will slow
us for a moment. Hope invites reflection: those eyes are desperate for enduring fame or if not that at least due recognition.
We read the back: a blurb from some big name, a stately font, a novel’s silly plot or some philosopher’s almighty claim
to mend the world with thought. We briskly jot a number down, return to our last spot and sift the nameless from the soon forgot.
‘Tell me a story, Dad, a sci-fi one!’ and you, ‘There were these cowboys on the moon…’ Lover of westerns, Shane, Stagecoach, High Noon, your bedtime stories finally came down
to saloons and tomahawks. The fastest gun, once eyeing neighbours with a deadly sneer, you wished to rustle steers for your career: ‘There’s not much call for that in Edgware, son.’
Ten years rode by, your Star Trek-gazing child baffled you: after work you’d sketch away: stern Indians, bent cactus trees, the wild
horses and charcoaled ranchers, while the shame of being poor bruised you. Your hand would sway, across the moon the whooping cowboys came.
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