At Clanricarde Gardens on a stuffy summer's night

I dropped a waitress at her flat

on a considered whim though undermotivated,

and she asked me in.

 

Through the marooned shell of a hall

and up the stair, no carpet

to soften the tread or tame

the lighted glare.

 

It was never designed to be a conquest,

she was dumpy and plain

and all the music wrung out of me

it was nearing the hour of three.

 

The Bayswater Road minded its business

she brewed a coffee

I perched, she plumped.

 

Then she drew my tired eye

to the magnolia walls

to the jigsaw puzzles carefully mounted

in matching frames, spreading out

 

to personalize the nondescript room,

thousand piecers, a minor lifetime

spent in modest absorbing gloom

and suddenly I fancied her for her brain engaged

 

bent forward over the utility table

pressing mole - like to the task

all thoughts of waitressing abandoned there

and how gratified she might feel

 

to have an admirer seeing her

being constantly undersold

to really shine or simply think

to put her hand in mine.