‘Liverpool's greatest native poet’

The chap with the foreign moniker and his ‘dear Mildred’

in a room at the top of Trafford Chambers: ‘tall, dark warren’

of offices, ten pounds a year, with Liverbird views of ships

and quays, river heading west. Him drudging at accountancy,

her waiting at tables, Miss MacPherson's café, Tithebarn Street.

A happy time, despite the desperate stairs: a raven's nest

of books and flowers, a hire-purchased upright where she sang

his favourite songs, while he ‘commenced author’ above and despite

the city with its dark paternal face. Yes, they had quarrelled,

son and father, had faced each other classically. That lad's

too dreamy, spineless, always reading trash, does not understand

the meaning of… etc… Let him run a brewery like me then see

how well… etc… Let him work at Chambers & Wade in Fenwick Street,

apprentice him to a sturdy provincial desk, have him learn to remain

a humble servant faithfully yours.

In their seventh-story heaven, as he called it in The Yellow Book,

she would watch him scribbling away – his work on Meredith,

his head full of poems – touch him on the shoulder, run her fingers

through his hair. Should she play some soothing thing for him?

See, there are stars in the skylight looking down on them.

On such a night, there is no death. Yet she will gasp

with typhoid fever three years hence, this room become

drab office to a chandler, Richard will hobnob with

the decadent and infamous awhile then be forgotten. On such

a night as this, the poet and his Mildred loved and dreamed.