Terry Street

 

“Persevering despite whatever happens, in love with

Moonlit rivers, my children, the whole wide world,

And if all this is close to the unbearably intimate

Then allow me, at least, to call it my poem, dedicated to –

 

Not to the dead (enough of that) – but to Bob Whitaker,

Who came back from the dead, who was the Beatles’ photographer,

Who helped me preserve what I knew, who added his optical art

To my love, my life, and to the times we have lived through,

 

And to my neighbours of then, whom I hardly knew,

Who knew little of me or us except through what they saw …

An interruption to grammar – the poem I’m trying to write

Means memory, means love, means two melodic rooms.”

 

From: Douglas Dunn: The Year’s Afternoon