The Book Reviewer
His tatty raincoat conceals a country,
rolled-up sleeves reveal many wristwatches.
He airily waves away rainbows of neckties
and pulls a smoke from a dark pocket.
But his book-side manner is a corrupt text,
for, though professing no fixed ideology,
he is a creature of -isms and -wasms,
sibilant with pure vexation, and even now
he is trimming his wick, getting the book in focus,
preparing the performance, his pile of cadences,
his cadences which lurk like police officers
preparing to mumble a caution of nouns,
or like chefs proposing a sticky syllable pudding
from the quicksilver promise of someone else’s words.
David Eggleton