Stanley Cook
George the Barber
Plump, with a fat man’s manual dexterity,
He first came round on a bike, with a leather bag
Like a doctor’s emergency kit on the carrier,
Cutting at the table by gas or lamplight
And moving later to a lean-to by the Working Men’s.
He cut my hair from golden curls to black
And when I was old enough to bike it
Always started his conversation with ‘Father?’ and ‘Mother?’,
Meaning ‘Are they all right?’; the only barber
I ever talked to. Customers waited
On a stick of secondhand cinema seats
With a view in a pier glass whose upper half
Was working but never used; his qualifications
Hung framed beside it — his membership scroll from the Buffs.
For passing the scholarship he gave me a prize,
Macaulay’s Lays in an 1882 edition,
The covers as thick as the text, with a golden Roman
Waving his sword on the front and the verses in
About Horatius the school editions omit,
That might make you think he did it for money.
‘You’ll find more use for this than me,’ he ruled
In a tone that meant he was clearing out his life
He had persevered with in that glorified shed,
With a wife who was ill, whose parents were old.
His hair and moustache were Italian to the end;
His breath was Scotch.
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