Likestarlings

North Street

She finds herself at the end of North Street
beneath the shadow of the town-hall clock,
and the chiming hours are still so familiar
that her packed suitcase falls to the curb.

She can see through the looking glass window
of Bellai's Café that it's open for business, not
as it is, but as it used to be: a cardboard sign
hung on the open door with a scrawled ‘OPEN'

while inside the delights of ice-cream and coffee
are sat on yellowing plastic-coated tables, and,
at the back, Bellai works the dials and levers
of the coffee machine like the head of a crazed elephant.

At one of the tables, two ageing brothers,
the twins, Jack and Harry Cole, play dominos.
Four gnarled hands reach in to break the lines,
setting the small black sleds awry on the tabletop.

"Bardi, Italy" was Bellai's home. "Bardi after Bardus,
the last elephant of the barbarian Hannibal's army."
And she recalls the foundering elephantine liners
sunk in the Atlantic under the stings of stukas.

So she steps into the café like a dream of home
where a letter of condolence has not yet been written;
suitcases and trunks lie unpacked; visas still in tact;
and the family of Bellai work the café on North Street.