Reading:
A Bohemian in Battersea When I was in my lonely and frustrated teens And yearning somehow to become an artist Paris was the place to go to realise your dreams. But evening classes twice a week in post-war London had to make-do for my Montmartre. And news of intellectual heroes such as Jean-Paul Sartre Had yet to penetrate our benighted back streets. But I had already heard the name of Baudelaire. Our trendy French assistant - Monsieur Teisseire Had put us on to him in language practice back at school. I found Les Fleurs du Mal on Lavender Hill And heard a voice that spoke to me in sympathy. I too knew what it was to haunt the turnings and the alleys Of a fog-bound, teeming and mysterious city. And I discovered that in every far-flung Outpost of despair, he’d already been there. But how I envied him when I read Of his Black Venus from Haiti! Though once I flirted with a beautiful creole Who came into to our studio, I was too young To take it further. More’s the pity! Miscegenation lay beyond my scope. I was to be the hope of the family, My destiny the university. But I lived in a dream instead. In my mind, I was painting in some Left Bank atelier Making pictures that would stun the connoisseur! But as I roamed the banlieues of Battersea I was in my small way, a true flaneur Though what I sought from the passing scene Was imagery that ready-made, would turn into a painting. At the time I did not have the wit to glean Some real-life stories from my wandering. Looking back, I think that if I’d been listening More and looking less I might have been a writer. All I got from Baudelaire’s example then Was how to smoke. Not hashish of course, But Gallagher’s Four Square Green. And while a fellow would-be painter Taught me how to use a lighter, The poetry of Baudelaire it was That tinted it with glamour. I can recite his poem now: Je suis le pipe d’un auteur! But Paris has long since given way to Italy And I haven’t smoked a pipe for sixty years. Yet as I write these lines I’m still inspired By that dazzling and contrarian penseur Whose words rang in those teenage ears.
Peter Lloyd Jones 