Butterscotch
Butterscotch is my Madeleine.
As it clatters round my mouth
dissolves to silk, cloys sweetly,
then dark streets rise.
Out of the vagaries of memory shouts ring
where children with grazed knees and scuffed shoes
play in sooty canyons,
deliev-o, kick-can, balling the tins,
a sort of cricket against a bin,
sunlight over grimy, close ginnels, entries, ashtubs;
furtive explorations of Eden in the narrow ways,
that sent me skipping with a rattle of clogs
high as a kite, giddy as a kipper,
through lines of cracking sheets,
billow-white and dazzle-down-drift of the morning-o,
perfumes of soap, astringencies of carbolic,
the beckon of bread and fried onions.
Cloven hoofs on cobbles chime through all those early days,
when my world was shared with some wan Eve;
a stick of rock with ‘Wonder’ all the way through.
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