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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Grevel Lindop

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Caption

Photograph of a corner-shop, its rust-red
paintwork framing a collage of gaudy
adverts, Brook Bond Tea, Senior
Service Satisfy, Tizer, Park Drive
on the windows, and the interior beyond
cool blue-green like an aquarium.
A hoop-backed upright chair on the paving-stones
recalls the old woman who sat like a doll
there one hot day, eyes closed to the light,
thin wrists composed on knees, completing
my picture, I thought, until I returned
with a camera and she was gone,
just the chair keeping its spindly shadow
at the edge of the stone doorstep.
     Park Street or Albert Street, one of the places
you couldn’t find now under the rubble
of demolition and the cleared earth even
with a map, any more than now
I could trace to some junk-shop that cheap
wooden chair which waits in the photograph
stage-left, the seat still cool in the sun,
for someone
who in a moment will step again
into the street and rest there.

 

Page(s) 31-32

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