0009 Mild And Bitter Thoughts Poem by Michael Shepherd

and I'm sitting in the pub,
fruitful source of people-watching verse,
(Jake will know it)
collecting the strength to walking-stick home
or that's the story,
chilling out,
glass half empty,
heart half full,
a benign haze of love
for all the people in the pub
mingling with an universal love
suspectly

opposite, two sepia photographs
of local scenes, which the thoughtful pub chain
use to decorate the walls:
both are of the local, semi-rural, Tube station;
one's from 1905ish so I'd I guess
from the floor-length skirts,
the birds'-nest hats; I wonder
if the ladies felt the need to think
dress up? dress down? for this
ground-breaking, literally,
new form of transport?

the other's from around the early 1920s:
a glimpse of stockinged ankle, gasp, or manly faint..
I try to place myself, push my sepia way
into gelled history - 1905, and if I still lived round here
the house would be brand-new; I -we- would be so proud;
newly-married with my stable job,
stiff collar rubbing on the neck in summer heat;
and just the right age to fight
for King And Country in that bitter war
that loomed on the expansive, leisurely, secure
Edwardian horizon..how did my widow manage
with all those children?

No; I know too much in my born blood
of that trench war.. let's look instead
at post-war peace - the stiff collar
still chafes, but I walk erect
still in a bowler hat, a waistcoat, a sense
of my place in society, a career
of slow but steady rise in just one firm; and
it's a toss-up whether I might be
still young enough to be called up for
my King And Country around 1939,
or old enough to be bombed at home...

The glass is empty and the crisps are done
(that sounds like Auden, Eliot, Betjeman?) :
I pull myself with sepia suction sound
out of the photos into full colour; and
still benign and walking steady,
take home my fantasies and gratitude.
One lifetime at a time - that's quite enough.