Old Souls
Last Night on Youtube in 1903
This 1903 London poem by Jack Fritscher starts with a colorized YouTube video of the oldest photos of 1903 London. It stops on one orphaned seventeen-year-old outside a Salvation Army barracks and wishes he could travel back to save him.
Last night on YouTube
in “The Oldest Ever Photos of England,”
I paused the high-definition colorized video
when I spied you on screen
in your home-spun work clothes
ragged shirt and vest open down your throat
your first mustache drooping sad
on your resolute young face
seventeen orphaned for six years
standing in stopped time
120-some years ago in 1903
in a crowd of destitute working men
and desperate boys
Victorian rag-pickers and mudlarks
standing quiet hungry outside
a Salvation Army Barracks in London
during the morning crush
of yawning men having waked
in beds twopence a night
in lodging houses
finding a charity meal ticket
dropped by Salvationists
on their bunks during the night
queuing up for a farthing breakfast
a quarter of a penny
cheese and crust
with Jesus Christ.
I wanted to travel back in time
like the movies and save you.
About the 1903 London Poem
“Old Souls: Last Night on YouTube in 1903” is a 1903 London poem by Jack Fritscher that begins in front of a screen. While watching the colorized, high-definition video “The Oldest Ever Photos of England,” the poet pauses on one face: a seventeen-year-old boy, orphaned for six years, standing among destitute working men and desperate boys outside a Salvation Army barracks.
The poem recalls the Victorian morning that the photograph freezes: beds at twopence a night in lodging houses, a charity meal ticket dropped by Salvationists on the bunks, and a farthing breakfast of cheese and crust. Its closing wish, to travel back in time like the movies and save the boy, turns a photograph more than 120 years old into an act of witness.
Read more of Jack Fritscher’s verse in the Essays, Scripts, and Poetry collection, or learn about the history of the Salvation Army on Wikipedia.