The West End wanders in my recollection
like a quiet madman. All the times we were
reminded of the War, pointed out the bullet-riddled
walls of the Old Tate, the Arch, guided through the
rooms where Churchill walked. All that aside,
we looked to keep homesickness in its box with strong
black beer or red, by wandering Regent's Park strewn with
fallen gold, or the Garden's rioting roar of flowers, apples, oranges, potatoes and
all of it turning to the ceaseless industry of men and women.
Mystery was the grey-haired Underground men, grey clothes
stuffed with crumpled paper. Once, I stumbled on a scrap
of unreclaimed, timeless London: shattered glass and rubble
carpeting the dull ceramic tile. Ghosts and dusk entered
where ceiling once had been, the silence of a grainy,
blackandwhite Blitz echoing.