The Saturday poem: My Father's Wardrobe

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/saturday-poem-my-fathers-wardrobe-pascale-petit

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In the late afternoon he begins his toilette – he has limestone pyjamas threaded with fossils,a nightshirt of catacombs through which his dreams drip.He has a dressing gown woven with petrol fumes, between its foldsecho car-horns and the murmur of tourists.He tries on the long rail of awakening suits.He dresses from the quarries that built Paris.He wears a cathedral cloak with chimera eyes.His raincoat is stuccoed with sprouting gargoyles.He has trousers that are stained-glass windows,casting shadows like candied fruit as he walks.His cravat is a knotted métro train,one tie is an escalator, another a fountainwith Saint-Michel fighting Satan.A carousel turns silently between his knees and in it a boy is singing on a lacquered foal.He has a shirt of hotel frontsand a waistcoat of bridges under which bateaux mouches glide.He emerges from the trapdoors of nightclubs in a wedding suit of pavements that steam in the sunand in it he marries the dawn.He has a jacket made of wind-blown newspapersand a cocktail suit of cigarette smokewith balconies for pockets. Sometimeshe wears a suit of ash that scatters when he moves.

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