Cover Poem

Radiant Junctions 
(Liverpool Lime Street, 1938)
for Steven Scholes and Peter Hart

Rain makes a river of reflections. Headlight beams shine

this street to a glassy sheen. Windows glow with hearth-like
invitation, hinting at some sweet delights unseen.

Trams ferry their freight through cobblestone tides.

My father and mother could be in this picture:

holding scholar tickets, seen upstairs on the Number Six,

heading home from a day at the seaside, the circus, the flicks.

A foreground clock reads five past four. Back of the tick,

back of the tock, streets are chock-a-block with characters:

department stores and market stalls are stacked with stories

from the Mersey Docks and Laughter Board.

Later, night will wash the sky of colour and daub these bars

with a rosy flush. Tunes will flow into evening air, all lyrical

and lush. This is a painted city, a written city, a spoken city:

speech bubbles up where two figures pass. The craic fizzes

up through pavement cracks.

History rides on tramline tracks: the East Lancs laid four years
before, a road not yet travelled by Matt Busby, who will line up

with Liddell in Liverpool red this season. The Munich debacle

is on the horizon: Chamberlain’s infamous Peace In Our Time.

The last rays of hope shine from the cobbles. We know

what’s coming around the corner, what’s approaching
over the border. Crossing the junctions of our own lives,

we pay no heed that the clock now reads one minute to midnight.