We were inveterate readers, you and I –
The Penguin Modern Classics generation:
We took our values from that pale grey spine
And dreamt of our first literary creation.
The novels we would write! The poems! The plays!
(You had your favourite titles, I had mine.)
And then the pseudonyms we’d have – the craze
For double-barrelled names that had to rhyme!
They were like love-words. And those childish plans
Were nothing more or less than declarations.
I loved you, love you, still don’t understand
My role as author of our separation.
In bookshops now, I pounce on likely names.
You must read still. You surely do the same.
By Jonathan Steffen
Photograph by Matthew Weir
Visit the Tuesday Poem blog for more: www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.co.uk
In Bookshops Now appears in Exposure
