Old Flames: a poem

Dawn Kozoboli is a local writer who loves swimming at the Brockwell Lido, soaking up the sun at the side of it, and like many others, is inspired by the water, the open space, and the people there.

Illustration by Rosa Goodman

‘Some come to swim, some to sunbathe, some to mend broken hearts and some you can see are just about to have their hearts broken….’

He, the visiting Eurocrat,
She, the linguist queen at home.

She loves the Lido for
being uncomplicated,
regal in its simplicity:
just get in and swim.

Paradigms
of every kind
they just float away.

No tense
but the present,
the only aspect
- this.

Grief may be around the corner;That bloke just waiting at the bus stop,
or sitting outside the pub,
flicking his fag ash around.
Innocent. Lurking.
But here contradictions are barred:
contained within these walls,
within this time,
this place,
surely here
her rule holds sway?

He knows
that here time is not contained,
just limited, kept at arm’s length.
Like the lifeguard with his whistle,
taut on its cord – it will be blown,
so duty waits outside the walls, and when it calls,
he will listen.
But for now
he will swim, discarding
what he can:

This diktat
or that
just left
by the side.

Tits
awaiting tats,
bricks
awaiting bats

all filed
at the side
of the Lido.

Aspiring to an innocence they
know they cannot own, they
swim,
and
laugh
and
kiss.

Here, caught between
the real blue of the sky
and the false blue of the pool
as on that ancient coast
stark, and with no shadows,
when the time comes,
the tragedy must unfold
and they will play their parts.

Here, language pours out
like water from a spout:

‘passion’/ ‘duty’
’Carthage’/’Rome’
‘love’/ ‘reality’
‘exotica’/’home’

pours out unheeded
and washes away.

All that’s left – a scrap
of a purple bikini brief,
fragments of classics
imprinted, remnants of grief

are held in every lover’s lost embrace,
and so their timeless ghosts endure:

Aeneas
in his Speedos
and
Dido
at the Lido.

More poetry on DOV.

Send your poems to dulwichonview@googlemail.com