the village shop that sold childhoods

the village shop that sold childhoods

the bacon slicer sang

to the gossip in the shop of

bread and welsh salt butter 

sucked through the wrapping

by a boy who bit on the crust,

running home to mammy and daddy 

and tea.

  the same boy who 

drank owbridge’s cough medicine

beside every chilblain fireside of a 

zinc bath winter. who grimaced down

thomas’s actos brand cough medicine, or

sucked chloridine lozenges that etherised

every tickly cough to an early death.

  while back in the shop

the cold-room door clunked chrome locked,

hoar breath tight on the bacon flitch;

and sepulchred in white, denied every warm thought.

  eyes winced as the cheese wire garrotted

a rind-round truckle of the summer herds.

ceiling to floor tinned with staple,

walls boxed with carbolic, lifeboy,

washing soda and flakes, dolly blue bags

for white shirts, their collars and cuffs.

then the door bell clangles 

and one scarf leaves as the next

housewife tells of what’s for dinner

that the grey coated shopkeeper will add

to his pencilled list, and then add

one of these and one of those;

and so the story goes, and

the door goes, and 

nobody, nobody knows

what the night will bring,

when the door bell no longer rings,

for the shop is shut lamplight tight;

and the shopkeeper shops alone.