Fondling Your Breasts In Roman Britain
Leaving the museum, the one we frequently
met in at lunchtimes, I stepped out
from the marbled entrance
onto a carousel of umbrellas, a waltz of mini spires
Constantinople domes holding
up a dull city sky.
Splash! and a ripple,
and a ripple raced to the edge, puddled against
a background streaked by smudges
of red buses as black cabs drizzle
through streams of traffic; a-swirl of street sounds
mixed with the anxious fear of leaves left to shiver
as they succumb to the cull of Autumn.
This our season;
recalling diary pages
coded with our assignations, as trees unclothed
so truths falsely told; seduction
and sandwiches (egg and cress)
touching warm flesh under October clothing,
undoing buttons with fingers numb
and Anglo Saxon kisses buried deep inside
glass case coffins.
From the pavement
I glanced back
at memory,
standing on the marble steps
like the recently bereaved,
calculating the value of broken things.
