The Man on the Clapham Omnibus
Watching the bowler hats and the swirls of hair Rising unsteadily up the spiral stair, Percy sat in the corner: Nestles milk, Champions vinegar, Enos, puckered with talk.
He thought of his brother Alfred, fighting the Boers.
The tug and snort and clatter of the horse Took him down Whitehall: shiny railings chained To shouting women. Sputtering as they turned Onto Lambeth Bridge, he noticed the horse was gone, And the driver's top hat. All along Nine Elms Lane Came the long dig in of the Kaiser's war, and his wife Watching the buses, wondering who would get off.
Uncle Alfred had decided to stay in the Cape.
Percy (now Graham) watched the skirts climb up Ankle and shin and over the knee. Harold Lloyd Hanging out of the windows along the Clapham Road.
On his way to watch Perry and Hobbs and Dixie Dean He thought of the coming war, and wondered when And exactly how: Pale clouds of poison gas?
Exploding Zeppelins flaming onto the grass?
Peeled houses showing their private parts, bath, bed And intimate wallpaper. Clapham Common, South Side.
And change. All vote Labour. Demobbed, he looked for a name, Derek or Peter or Bill or Ronnie or Jim.
He looked for a room; each house was a dozen bed-sits.
He picked up his rations, butter and bacon and sweets.
The traffic cluttered and chattered down Nightingale Walk, And the bus turned round. He caught it back to Hyde Park.
The skirts had climbed to the thigh. In Grosvenor Square He got elbowed and shoved by a girl with a bouncing pair In a T-shirt. Then to Wapping and White Hart Lane To rough up the fuzz, or the blacks, or the Chelsea fans.
Jim lit up and damaged his health. He sat back and thought, It's not what it was; and it's bloody well not what it ought, What with Pakis and students and scabs and pigs and women, And fifty pence just to get to Clapham Common.
Laurence Lerner
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