for David Jenkins, who knows Boppo well

                         'All the fun's in how you say a thing.'
                                                 Robert Frost

1. Opening Gambit

A mop of hair, sad manic face, looks like
the sixth Marx brother: call him Boppo.
Never mind origins, upbringing and all that.
Unhappy childhoods are unhappy in their own way,
all happy childhoods alike. Especially in Wales.
So he hankered early to break out.
Slag-heaps and steelworks were backcloths to intergalactic
fantasy: Boppo, war-lord of Sirius!
And on rainy Sundays, having worked through all known
board-games, Boppo and his twin, Hoopo,
made up their own: 'Underground',
based on the London Tube map, dice, `journey-cards',
...