For years I thought this storefront
was a conceptual art installation
a dusty grocery store that was never open
peering through the filmy windows, flaneurs saw
evenly spaced cans of anonymous food standing patiently
waiting for no one - meditating on hunger
For about a decade it has been a bar
a beloved watering hole, alternative music space
A gender fluid friend’s fav hangout lounge
It’s both darker and brighter now
crossed back over in to the land of the living
No longer a faintly lit abandoned movie set behind glass
This morning the old mystery story surfaces
It turns out The Lido was a time warp shrine
To the deprivations of World War Two: rusted past due food tins
hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden in the floorboards
The words of the Russian poet Tsvetaeva ring in my head:
“I have two enemies in all the world, Two twins, inseparably fused:
The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full.”
Pia Massie
2021
Vancouver, BC, Canada
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