The First Time — A Poem by J.G. Sandom

 

My aunt had gone to Paris for a holiday

and I was left alone in London with her flat

to promenade in Leicester Square.  A drunkard sat

and played a dead harmonica.

The air was full of spring’s decay: 

the pond ice, half-submerged and somewhat reticent,

uttered a groan for peace, a wish for winter spent

in hiding, covered by the light’s majolica.

 

And so I called a friend who said he’d come

to keep his company, and mine.  Inside the dome,

the engines bled their passengers; a few for home

in Haslemere; a few to work,

with glances at the clock; and some,

like us, to play.  The evening hid beneath the streets

and we ran slowly through the city veins, discreet

and fixed inside our trains, with silence our hauberk.

 

We climbed the night and drowned within the crowd

that pressed the pavement underneath the peacock light.

A woman’s laugh; the slamming of a door; tight

dissonance.  Our casual hands

inside our pockets hugged the loud

green paper with assurance.  We both knew the way.

We’d been there in our dreams, and on those lonely days

we’d spent chilling our white buttocks on the basement sand.

 

And so we climbed the stairs in silence, knowing that

this was a serious affair – a short crusade.

And, at the top, a woman with a pink Band-Aid

planted on her wrist smiled

at us.  She’s just a little fat,

I thought, and handed her my money.  And as I sucked

a foreign cigarette, I heard my friend get fucked

behind a curtain, with the moanings of a child.

 

1969 ~ Winchester, England