after Humphrey Spender’s ‘Dominoes’
Near as dammit to Orwell’s ideal, this,
or at least his pub’s essential qualities:
no radio or piano; the quiet bliss
of talk and its vital communality;
good honest beer; uncompromisingly
Victorian in its architecture;
tobacco smoke like a light fog on the sea.
These barmaids know each Bolton regular
by name. A southern foreigner, Spender
felt out of place in worktown’s dark-bricked streets
but found an everyday poetry here:
his photographs candid, unfussy, discreet.
Take this domino game between working men:
each making their move, until they start again.
