Robin Lindsay Wilson
Boudin's holiday snaps
the wind blows them small
and bunches them across the beach
bonnets and crinolines
lose their honest blue and dusty pink -
those useless frilled umbrellas
pull the girls apart
the sea gets wider -
the men are lost for words
the Sunday promenade dwindles
and reassembles
around the petty royals
and the aggressive flags
and before the century
has learned to scream
Madame Courbet stops listening
and wonders if her drawing room
has blown away
the chitchat blows back
into pretending faces -
ribbons sting eyes
and petticoats surge
like dirty waves
the men suddenly speak up
and then never speak again
Mademoiselle Lecadre
turns back with her niece
to the awnings and the tent
she says society
is thinner this year
and shivers
lonely is not a word
in her vocabulary -
it’s just a feeling
that she must lie down
and her niece
still tears a look
across the blasted sea defences
for pretty pictures
as the century
gets lonelier and lonelier
all around her
Page(s) 47-49
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