In a nineteenth century Paris poster
By Toulouse Lautrec, masked faces appear;
Nowhere is their habitation. They smile,
Ecstatic in a knowledge of secrets:
There they are, in half-dismantled places
That memory holds with queues of scaffolding;
Though from the shipwreck rises song like this.
The cries of drowned mariners fill all thoughts.
Mr Hester and Mr Sharpe are there:
One thin, and broadly smiling, one most dour
(A monk’s ring of hair dandruffs his jacket) –
Both colleagues of workdays long gone, where
We sold electrical wholesale house-ware.