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Anniversary issuePeter Noel
BARCELONA DIARY - BARCELONETA: LUNCHTIME

The pillowing of early afternoon
Drops flat and stifling on
The grid-ironed,
Short and narrow
Dockland streets.

High-sided, damp and swarthy tenements
Reject
The red/and yellow/red streaked sun;
Retain
The tongue-sweet smells of drains and tom-cats' piss;
Repel
The lottery ticket seller's blind muezzin wail.

Urchin cats provoke a
Muzzled puppy and
A child's hand grasps a
Scragged, unwilling kitten;
Weeping clothes cascade from
Iron-balustraded balconies
Where a caged canary sings
As women work unseen.

 

clare.gif (23648 bytes)

© 1998 Peter Noel

peter noelPeter Noel was born in England in 1944. He has worked in business, journalism and theatre, and studied English and Modern History at Oxford in the 1980s. He has lived and worked in eight countries. For the last eleven years he has lived in Barcelona where he writes and teaches.

Poem in Spanish | Catalan

 

Painting by Clare Nelson
An exhibition of her work
can be seen at the
British Council,
c/Amigó 83, Barcelona
9th to 30th June 1998

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