New Second-Hand

Poetry Pivotal 2 - New Second-Hand


Walking through Soho in dry light,
top stories splashed in yellow sun,
difficult for digital these Winter days
in life-on-earth shadow of streets,

grave stone of Hazlitt in the church
garden, backs of Old Compton Street,
their bricks and windows; one, piled high
with books, is glinting high up.

The tomb, in splendid isolation
lies flat on the grass, a clean cut
oblong, could be a book on its side,
a tome, Libor Amoris at rest.

While I photograph I’m watched
by a gardener who’s almost invisible
amongst leaves, brooms and wheel barrows.
Once in the Summer, with a new second-hand,

I was trying to get the spire
in, crouching and pointing the lens
up through foliage at the sky,
and fell over backwards, rolled

laughing in the grass, while
sitters on the church-yard benches,
my public, kept their pose.
Now, it’s the man working and me.


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