Posts Tagged pre-pubescent
‘EAST END GIRL, DANCING THE LAMBETH WALK’: BILL BRANDT
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on April 29th, 2011
'East End Girl, Dancing The Lambeth Walk' Photo by Bill Brandt
He’s set it up, of course. Or, rather, framed it.
There’d be no feigning this young woman’s delight
in being ‘free and easy’ and doing
‘as you darn well pleasy’. She’s got her best blouse on,
with shoulder puffs, her sister’s shoes, which fit her now,
black ankle socks and shoulder length, unpermed hair
freshly washed – and waved, probably with Kirby grips.
Doin’ the walk, she lifts the hem of her skirt,
revealing her slip – and smiles coquettishly.
Beside her is a line, a queue almost of
female acolytes. (The only boy looks away).
They’re pre-pubescent, excited, nervous at what they see:
grown up clothes, shapely legs, unimaginable bust,
a sensuousness that, unwilled, will be theirs.
Down the street of terraced houses, symmetrical
as barracks, a woman strides, her back turned
on this miracle: a girl who knows
she will never grow old – ‘Any ev’ning,
any day…Doin’ the Lambeth Walk.’ Oi!
CHILDREN’S HOUR
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on June 22nd, 2009
About teatime, when the coals were glowing
liquid orange and cream, strands of soot
would catch on the fireback,
flickering like torches in a forest.
And behind the wireless’ fretwork facade
the valves were alight with Uncles and Aunties,
soothing, articulate, evocative and refined,
bringing us safely to the Weather and the News.
We listened to the same wonders, you and I,
tuned the static and the soot to pre-pubescent stories,
sensing there was something else
beyond the sideboard.
What if we could have been told -
by a clairvoyant Romany perhaps? -
that, out in the ether,
there was someone we would want to love forever.
‘EAST END GIRL, DANCING THE LAMBETH WALK’: BILL BRANDT
Photograph – East end girl, dancing the Lambeth Walk © 1939
He’s set it up, of course. Or, rather, framed it.
There’d be no feigning this young woman’s delight
in being ‘free and easy’ and doing
‘as you darn well pleasy’. She’s got her best blouse on,
with shoulder puffs, her sister’s shoes, which fit her now,
black ankle socks and shoulder length, unpermed hair
freshly washed – and waved, probably with Kirby grips.
Doin’ the walk, she lifts the hem of her skirt,
revealing her slip – and smiles coquettishly.
Beside her is a line, a queue almost of
female acolytes. (The only boy looks away).
They’re pre-pubescent, excited, nervous at what they see:
grown up clothes, shapely legs, unimaginable bust,
a sensuousness that, unwilled, will be theirs.
Down the street of terraced houses, symmetrical
as barracks, a woman strides, her back turned
on this miracle: a girl who knows
she will never grow old – ‘Any ev’ning,
any day…Doin’ the Lambeth Walk.’ Oi!
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