Wilhelmina.
Out there. Somewhere, out there —past
the traffic lights on the corner of the Zeitgeist.
Past the public house, where lonesomeness
drags men by their wallets to the bottom
of a smokey barrel, somewhere. Out there:
beyond the signposts that read STOP & YOLO,
a bartender fills up another one, frothing
at the brim, as tumblers clink out
a drunken symphony for the broken-minded.
They know she’s out there; in the thick
of a brutal heatwave, where brave idlers
sprawl out on the heaths with Covid,
and a pack of chilled Coronas. You know the place;
that other, other place —far out there.
Behind the pieces of cloth we hang over our mouths
to pull down our ears and hide the guilt we feel
from being antisocial, from a distance —out there.
That’s where you’ll find her, watching and listening
to the screenplays of the new normals, speaking
no evil. The streetlights —they’ll soon come alive,
and tint the night a shade of asphalt amber.
Zebras will cross over Abbey Road, and beetles
will toot their horns around Westminster. That’s when you’ll find she’s ready to be seen. Ready to move and breathe like London again. To eat out. To help out. Somewhere in the open… gorgeously grounded… in the wonderful greatness—somewhere, out there.
