Leeds

I have just recalled an intense moment,
not my own, from one I never knew.
It came, a dark room development
in sepia, except the dusk was blue,

and the street and shops were of people
going home from work, of knickerbockers
and trams, the secular steeples
of a northern town, cloth caps and long frocks;

and some lad’s love was as full as the moon,
risen over the hills in Easter wind,
clearing the chimney smoke. It had ballooned
from certainty, his love was seconded

by a girl. His joy opened a window,
a stranger by century, walked into.

Woodford Halse - 8 April 2023

Don’t ask me how this happened. It was more than a dream, more like another life, and contact with another’s life. Maybe he lent me his feeling.

It was Leeds, I would say.