When he enters

When he enters

In the darkness

In those brief moments

Before the flare of brightness

From the ceiling lights

The bookcase looks as he remembers

Over-stuffed with well-thumbed books

Hard-spined poetry

Outsized picture books of featured artists

Pre-raphaelites with William Morris covers

Impressionists next to cubists

Freud propped up alongside Jung

The dust on the older books

More or less holding them together

The shadows of the statuaries,

Chinese brush stand and Buddha play

Against the wall

Ghosts of ancient laughter

Whisper in his ear

The smell of incense from the holder

Never lit in many years

Still lingers

The porcelain Ginger Tom picked up

In Camden for a song

Peeps out

With the eyes that seem to follow

Wherever he may go

The portrait of his mother

With the off-the-shoulder look

She was forced to explain to her mum

Before it could be sent to his dad

When he was serving in Burma

During the war

She wore a wrap, out of shot

But it did look a little saucy

All the same,

Perhaps it is a little dated

With so many books bought

So long ago the pages have

Begun to discolour

Fading to brown around the edges

He read Homer

As well as War and Peace

During lunch breaks

At his desk

Breathing in the smoke

From somebody else's

Benson & Hedges

He smoked Dunhill International

But not at work

It was always a leisure activity

He wouldn’t do it now

Although there were times

When the smell of tobacco

Seemed to linger

In the pages of a thriller,

Everyone's a killer now.