Before Life on Mars

Before you and me were us...before
your shadow crept out from behind a streetlamp
before you met me at a disco in a youth-club, just
at the end of Barnes Bridge wearing that ‘mellow yellow’ shirt

before you agreed to hold my satchel – stopped me
putting it down in the dirt when I ran to wash my face
in a fountain when you said I had a smudge
of ink on my nose

before you tried to sing along to Handel’s Messiah
a semi-tone higher, in your gravel-tone timbre...before
you stroked my thigh in that beat-up old Riley
belonged to your brother

when you’d not yet said, ‘Pincher Martin
at 12.30...’,before your green-tiger tattoo, and my braces,
or the Liverpool Express, before Billy Fury
in Dublin on the sofa, and Dylan Thomas
in the saloon bar

prior to our very first grope beneath a towel, on
the beach at Broadstairs, and before the body’s slang
and the body’s rhyme, before someone saying your name
made stars, shine and your tears left salt on my cheeks...before all this
intact was my heart.