Beginning in a city

• Those first few hours, with those packed impressionsI never looked at in all these years.
• I knew no room. I knew no Londoner.
• I searched without knowing.


  1. I dropped off my grip at the 'left luggage'

  2. A smart policeman told me a house to try
• In dim-lit streets, war-tired people moved slowlylike dark-coated bears in a snowy region.
• I in my Caribbean gearwas a half-finished shack in the cold winds.
• In November, the town was a frosty field.
• I walked fantastic stone streets in a dream.
• A man on duty took my ten-shilling notefor a bed for four nights.
• I was left in a close-walled room,left with a dying shadeless bulb,a pillowless bed and a smelly army blanket –all the comfort I had paid for.
• Curtainless in morning light, I crawled out of bedonto wooden legs and stiff-armed body,with a frosty-board face that I pattedwith icy water at the lavatory tap.
• Then I came to fellow-inmates in a crowded room.
• A rage of combined smells attacked me,clogging my nostrils –and new charges of other smells merelyincreased the stench. I was alone.
• I walked without map, without knowledgefrom Victoria to Brixton.
• So, I had begun – begun in London.