Nineteen-thirties teenager
Pacing park and pavement in East Twickenham
Declining French irregular verbs
So that as a Briton
He might better understand Breton
A psychogeographic return trail
Across La Manche to Gay Paris
Night visions of amphetamine disturbance
Good morning midnight
Though it’s not quite three
Hands whizzed backwards on a leaning clock
Transfixing time
For the rake of Teddington Lock
Melted poems not yet written
Like snowflakes on a kitten
Moons of cheese, lunes de fromage
A surrealist equipage
Shafts of Sauterne-like light
In St Stephen’s
Deep, steep, crisp, uneven…
Sentient sadness, intelligent madness
Took him down the decades
To a care home on the Isle of Wight
(Coloured sand tickling in the dark blue night)
One afternoon his nurse and future wife
Performed his poem at a reading –
Of a sudden, his subconscious bleeding,
He cried:
‘Of course, you know I am David Gascoyne…’
She did now.
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Julian Isaacs
Picture Nick Victor
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