George Harvey Bone
That
summer I spent sleepwalking
through mirror worlds of Norfolk seaside towns
in perpetual gloom, like a filter over a camera lens:
in Old Hunstanton
on the cliffs, I sat in the shelter
on the manicured green.
Next to me
sat Mr George Harvey-Bone
who had slipped out, he said, from evensong
“Where the choir sang like planes
going out across the channel
and
the stain glass showed ruins
of
Coventry cathedral.”
Funny, I
thought
as Harvey-Bone went in ‘39
and has slipped from the pages
of
that book.
‘I’m
looking for Mr Hamilton”
he said, “I want to know why I’m ill
I
heard he’s shooting up in Sheringham
but the dead aren’t allowed on the bus…
…so
I can’t leave old Sunny Hunny.”
He
turned his head towards me
like a shutter coming down on a shop.
Staring out across
the
phosphorescencing
Wash
I found myself saying
that if I bumped into Mr Hamilton
I’d be sure to let him know. |