It was not promising. The train
went into Swansea High Street backwards.
(Some points thing, they said).
He looked. Landore, copper, steelworks,
smoking with time’s grey industry.
Ahead, an unknown Wales.

But there lay ahead
quotidian reassurance, office and evenings,
espresso’s hiss, the Everly Brothers,
the bouffant Swansea girls, the age’s hum
of liberation. In their heyday then,
to the Mumbles pier, bank holiday,
the candy and the carnal thoughts
of Kiss-Me-Quick.
Young, they invented the weekend
in the immediate sunshine.

ROBERT NISBET is a Welsh poet living just a few miles down the coast from Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse. He has published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2020.