On hearing Debussy

I think

it was 'La Mer' first,

on Wal’s Dansette,

that we snogged to in 1961

and had our 'ecstasy of fumbling'

in the house next door.

    Walked past it every day

    off the 51

    after school.

    Never knew Wilfred

    lived there a while

    when he was a boy.

    Wish I had -

    I could have nodded

    at where he’d been

    some fifty years before

    in that old terraced street,

    still with no blue plaque

    at 14 Willmer Road.

   

Or was it

'L'Après-midi d'un Faune'

we started with?

(Willmer Road, one of three addresses Wilfred Owen lived at

while he attended secondary school at the Birkenhead Institute, England.)

.