Autumn Shades

They start to say autumnal in the forecasts,
And on the Northern Line the shifting panels
Look bleached already. I think less about
The low-cost rivieras than the remedies
At the ends of small pale almanacs for afflictions
Acquired by the old, or suffered by loners
In the margins of respectable families
— Ailments with names we don’t use any more.

Each black-and-white ad in the narrow columns
Promised miracles on the same unlikely terms,
For the sender sitting in a bedroom corner
To seal an envelope bought that afternoon…
Could I even imagine one such to be my own,
With a man returning from a PO Box in Strood
And sending by return, as promised, the First Lesson
In his course called Why Not Join Me in the Coloured Pages?