Portobello Road
I'm only eight, still unscathed
by fate and slowly passing time.
Dragging on your tired arm
as you shop for ripe antiques--
dividing the dust like fractions in school.
The goal, of course, to get some bargain
fresh from someone's gritty past,
some condom from the intercourse
of hope and grief --
a bust of bronze, a silver teapot
painted over by mistake.Crushing bodies pressed
against the going art,
sorting through heirlooms
as if they are elbowing ghosts,
bettering their silences
with acquisitions meeting thirst.
My seersucker dress, a diary's page
caught in the conical crowd.
This produce of divorce or death
with ragged leaves and withered hands--
I'll learn its sadness on my own
the way all turtles leave a shell.Rain clouds of gray whipping cream
smother little beams of light.
Thick history books, a soul for sale
like some Vienna choirboy
whose voice has turned too low to sing
beyond the groaning of the wind.
A sea of legs and blistered feet,
women with old mushroom eyes,
opaque and dim from lost amour.
Streets away, the Thames rolls by
as if composure wins the war
and rivers never lie to boats.
--Janet I. Buck