Regret

So many years have passed since we stoodOutside the phone box, waiting –It was icy-cold and dark.This was the sixties when tv screensWere as black and white as the politics.But times they were-a-changingAnd thatcher was just a name for a prole.My girlfriend, as she was then, linked her armThrough mine which was firmly plantedIn the deep pockets of my duffle coat.We were young and fresh with life -Even so I remember stamping my feetAnd muttering to myself that the unknownMan in the box was taking a hell of a long time.‘Shush! He’ll hear you.’‘Well, he might get a move on.’‘We . . .stopping . . . days lady. . .Do you . . . coloured people?’Had I heard him right?I moved closer to the phone boxAnd as if on cue, he spoke again:‘I asked lady if you take coloured peopleIn your Blackpool hotel?’I couldn’t hear the reply, of course,But down the years I have often wonderedJust what this ‘lady’ had to say.Did she feel an abiding sense of shameThat white and black were good and badIn a never-ending rotten cruel game?And, like me, did she marvel that a manCould ask such a question in suchA matter of fact way?Or did she simply shoo him away –Like a stray dog?

But when he opened the door and smiledAt me and my girl friend, he gave nothing away.And I did not speak.That silence, like the fear of death,Has never quite gone away.