John Barton - playground

              Egg tempera on pressed wood panel, 1948

A compound flagged by concrete, cracks unadorned
By blades of grass straggling into the light pouring in

Between still inhabited torched tenements uncleared
To make way for a renaissance foretold by building

Sites block after block, a bare-chested boy reaching

Outside the shadow a rising tower casts as he ascends

The metal fence cut across the yard, the shirt knotted
Round his neck a sweep of wings circumscribed

As he steps into the air, by one hand hanging rampant
Eyes sunwards, a punk Icarus already fallen on hard times

Three fellow toughs below him, shiftless and bored
One picking his nose, one flexing a black hand inside

His catcher’s mitt—a cast-off—with no hope for a game
Arm heavy on the third’s shoulder, who leans indifferent

Against chainlink, a bat unswung and angled downwards
Between his thighs, a fourth boy espaliered against a brick

Wall on the opposite side of the fence adrift safe in his own
Thoughts while they take in the spectacle of flesh bared

To the sun, three other youths across the yard preening
For anyone who looks, indolent, with no swimming hole

To dive into, a singlet untucked, a shirt off the shoulder
Another’s entirely off, his dungarees’ top button undone

Waistband eased back, skin gilding his flesh, hips and ribs
Raised up in shadow by late afternoon breeze, unsated eyes

Turned without surprise towards the playground gate
Palms slid inside his y-fronts, buttocks cupped as if

He were about to slip everything off, a model weary
Of scrutiny, the body no more than a tool of some trade

Picked up by chance, The Times crumpled at his feet
Torn pages stained and blowing, days-old headlines

At odds about which way to go: peace or conscription
Unclaimed laundry pegged overhead breezily in a flap

Another of this trinity able to daydream with a Marlboro
While the last, knees akimbo, balances on his ring finger

A bat primed for drive-balls—what a strange boy, frail
Yet untouched, unlike the girl in red who stands pinned

Between her lounging beau’s spread legs, manicured
Hands on his shoulders, wary about the future, poised

For a kiss and deaf to the whoops of two players at the far
End of the compound, who can’t stop vying for dominance.