The Dance Downstairs

We lived in a flat above a small hotel,
amongst its sorrows and occasions:
birthday parties and blocked drains,
the stink of smoke in corridors
from late nights in the bar, glasses to empty,
surfaces to shine: my brother and myself,
allowed to stay up late, to watch arrivals -
women in long satin, men in dinner suits.

We learned when to enter, when to stay
away. Overheard the conversations
of old colonels, saw the crumpled sheets
of lovers’ beds, the thin lives of single
women who rented rooms for years.
Piles of suitcases signalled arrivals
and departures all the endlessness
of meetings and exchange.

Along the back corridors I learned
to craft illusions: folded napkins into fans,
turned icing red, polished glass to crystal,
made dance floors into bowers.
Carnations were for weddings, lilies
for the dead. One winter the rain came in,
rising through the cellars, broken chairs
and wine bottles floated to the sea.

But I still fell asleep dreaming the dance
downstairs. That place which filled with
pearls and stars was its own turning
world where moments lingered,
then were gone. Outside on the wide river,
the Tilbury tankers hooted in the dark:
the moon a clasp, just beyond the curtain.

Published in SEAM