Unprotected for the most part, out of their paper sleeves,
and stacked in the sideboard as if it were a jukebox
with all of their nicks and scratches and sharp scores
pressed up together in the plastic-smelling dark,
the singles used to spill out like so many side-plates
once I got started on their daily inspection;
tilting the vinyl into sunlight, and closing one eye,
I squinted across the surface, over a dark
spectrum of grooves and dust, where the smooth run-out
ended at a milled ridge, then the label
in blue or black, with its silver-grey lettering
that I learned by heart, spelling the titles and names
slowly to myself, more certainly each time,
to put together words like Gloria, Anna-Marie,
and whole runs of language in THE HUCKLE-BUCK,
SHE LOVES YOU, or SORRY (I RAN ALL THE WAY)
as I ferried singles across our quiet sitting-room
to the Dansette with its open lid, a spindle
and rubber-plated turntable, ready to play them all
to destruction, till late in the morning, when
the patterned carpet was the map of another world
in some year that’s not coming around again,
like the showbands and Them, the Beatles and Jim Reeves,
and THIS BOY, DISTANT DRUMS, or BABY PLEASE DON’T GO.