1950 · Ballpoint Pen · Work 1298 of 1,871
A village schoolroom in France on a cold bright winter morning, low sun through tall windows and chalk dust in the beams, on a scratched oak desk with a sunken porcelain inkwell an open exercise book of squared paper lying flat, beside it a steel-nibbed dip pen and the new ballpoint pen, a slender hexagonal barrel of glass-clear plastic fifteen centimetres long, smooth and plain from end to end, inside it the thin ink tube as a dark blue line, a blue end plug, a conical brass tip, its pointed blue cap with a moulded clip beside it, a child's hand drawing a blue line across the page.