Member-only story
My latest book of poems
Jude the Unshrewd
A contemporary poem
Her name was Helen –
from Australia –
and it was all a very long time ago:
the late 1960s.
Helen managed a shop
selling eastern ethnic goods
near the British Museum;
one of those shops which really stank
– very attractively, I thought — of incense,
fresh leather, animal skins and immersive
otherworldly exoticism. Why
bother going to Afghanistan, or Tibet,
or Nepal Bhutan Himalayistan
when you could wander around shops
like these, handling the goods, smelling
the patchouli and the distant dung, and hearing the
altogether unfamiliar sounds
of oriental yak yurt music.
Helen took a liking to me. Or, at least,
she said she did. Sales must have been a bit
slow that day. There were lots of people
looking at stuff, but no one seemed to
be buying. Did anyone ever ? Na na na
nana na (Hey Jude). These shops only lasted a short time
and then disappeared, only
to reappear…