Douglas Dunn (n.1942)

The Clothes Pit

The young women are obsessed with beauty.
Their old-fashioned sewing machines rattle in Terry Street.
They must keep up, they must keep up.

They wear teasing skirts and latest shoes,
Lush, impermanent coats, American cosmetics.
But they lack intellectual grooming.

In the culture of clothes and little philosophies,
They only have clothes. They do not need to be seen
Carrying a copy of International Times.

Or the Liverpool Poets, the wish to justify their looks
with things beyond themselves. They mix up colours,
And somehow they are often fat and unlovely.

They don’t get high on pot, but get sick on cheap
Spanish Burgundy, or beer in rampant pubs,
And come home supported and kissed and bad-tempered.

But they have bright clothes, bright enough to show they dream
Of places other than this, an inarticulate paradise,
Eating exotic fowl in the sunshine with courteous boys.

Three girls go down the street with the summer wind.
The litter of pop rhetoric blows down Terry Street,
Bounces past their feet, into their lives.