Through the shadows and the street cries scribbler Boswell,
as ever in need of a drink and an eye out for the ladies,
limping along beside him old Dictionary Johnson,
as ever in need of a bath. Ghosts in the traffic,
shadows in dim lamplight turning off the Strand,
headed for the lit door of No. 8, there in the Great Room
to attend a lecture on light, and after to the tavern.
Sirs, we are made of light, all of light. And I?
I am the doorkeeper to this house of enlightenment,
though I am long gone into the sunset now, I am but his ghost
among the other ghosts, the company of ancient lights.
Beneath all this noble talk up above of improvement,
I know the other trades thriving underneath
in the tunnels and the arches down below,
down where the river’s traffic in wines from the lowlands,
coals from Newcastle, roll up the cobbles on iron wheels
among gulls’ cries and women’s, rats, dogs,
the odd corpse knocking at the wharfside,
and the black slave boy sneaked by at nightfall, hooded,
lost in the city’s night and the fogs of the riverside,
I saw him scurried by just as that moment
Dogood Franklin handing in his coat muttered
to himself liberty, liberty, what is liberty but an engine
that must be fuelled and from which much use comes.
Years go by into centuries. I’ve met them all.
Reynolds, that toff, I have shaken the rain from his umbrella.
Adam Smith, I have taken his coat and he thanked me.
Marx, never a tipper, nor stood any man a drink.
Stephenson, now there was a gentleman, and the likes
of Isambard Kingdom Brunel we’ll not see again,
nor your man Charlie Dickens, forever declaring
Brighten it, brighten it, a man always departing in haste.
And that wee man, the unknown inventor of a writing desk
that in case of shipwreck opens out into a literati,
he gave me the name of a very fine horse once.
So here’s to all and all the others anonymous,
may they be blessed and ever of good cheer
who set out to make this world more sensible,
at any rate from where I stand here in the doorframe.