I heard this poem by Adrian Mitchell for the first time on last night’s Words & Music programme Walkers, Wanderers and Wayfarers on Radio 3.
It brings back many infuriating memories of trying to negotiate, undrenched, the pavements in Oxford Road
Watch your step - I'm drenched
In Manchester there are a thousand puddles.
Bus-queue puddles poised on slanting paving stones,
Railway puddles slouching outside stations,
Cinema puddles in ambush at the exits,
Zebra-crossing puddles in dips of the dark stripes --
They lurk in the murk
Of the north-western evening
For the sake of their notorious joke,
Their only joke -- to soak
The tights or trousers of the citizens.
Each splash and consequent curse is echoed by
One thousand dark Mancunian puddle chuckles.
In Manchester there lives the King of Puddles,
Master of Miniature Muck Lakes,
The Shah of Slosh, Splendifero of Splash,
Prince, Pasha and Pope of Puddledom.
Where? Somewhere. The rain-headed ruler
Lies doggo, incognito,
Disguised as an average, accidental mini-pool.
He is as scared as any other emperor,
For one night, all his soiled and soggy victims
Might storm his streets, assassination in their minds,
A thousand rolls of blotting paper in their hands,
And drink his shadowed, one-joke life away.
