7


We inhabit old films
Black and white westerns glimpsed over the sundays
Family entertainment
The latest british film
Patriotic, stiff and half humorous at least
Deprecating fatally itself and us

Everything switches from under to overplay
Like mad relatives
Threatening impossible people Dad works for
Teachers seen out of school
Like travesties of the real people they are
Threatening or helpful
We also inhabit

And shops that don't exist
Grocers making up orders
Drapers and ironmongers
Quiet respectable places
Where you were known and
Everyone knows you as the bell
Rings, a real bell

Like the sound of the fire engine
Everyone gets out to watch
The double show:
Getting to it
And then it rushes off clanging
But it won't come back
Stuck in the memory

A faded land
We all really inhabit
Make it our own
It gets to know us and to love us
Each detail
Unless lost or broken
Slowly reappearing
Sharpens