Who would ever have thought
that on this grey
winter-born day
of late December,
that the man
behind the eye-glass counter,
who turns out to be
a Kensington Market
Portuguese-Canadian,
would become
in the twinkle of an eye
a lyric poet of the sea
and all its creatures
as with waving arms
and exciting mouth utterance
he describes
with all the care of a brain-surgeon
the step-by-step dissection
for the family table
of first a crab
and then a giant lobster –
the waves of the Atlantic
suddenly beating on the shores of Portugal
right outside this very store
on Dundas Street West!
– Raymond Souster
