RYE LANE POST OFFICE
Post office queue
On Monday morning,
And life''s hiatus
Is full of life.
Middle-aged men
In unemployed
Pot-bellied deadness,
Cursed, afflicted
With life as an endless
Phantom pregnancy,
Forever unborn;
Lonely old folk,
And lonely women
With babies on wheels;
And women who
Cash benefits,
Hauling bags; and kids
Who hang on rails
Adventuring,
With treats to hope for
From the tedious wait;
And all the tribes
Of Peckham are here:
A plump black girl;
An African woman
With a beautiful
High-browed head
On a Queen-sized body,
And a proud, uncertain
Mouth, soft and purple;
Two noisy small
Gold-toothed old
Chinese, atop
Their Tower of Babel,
Loudly isolated;
And one bald
Eireannach, scribbling,
Remembering
The fine stone steps,
To the imposing
Ennis courthouse,
Where they would queue
Each Saturday:
English Whig
Magnificence
To cow the Taigs,
Who were not cowed
'Till some of them
Held, controlled
The spiralling queues,
On the cut-stone stairways
Down to the quays
And the emigrant ships.
1991