Five Famous People Spotted in the British Library

Man, faded jeans and crumpled white shirt
Invented a code
Enabling computers of different races,
Religions and sexual persuasions
To talk to one another.

Woman, frizzy hair back from forehead
Low-slung scuffed leather bag
Wrote a series of mind-altering essays
On cytotoxic triterpenoids derivatives

Man, blue shirt, head down, muddy shoes
Turned conventional wisdom on its head.
Sells out at philosophical conventions
Obtuse and garrulous
Working on novel about Ba Jin Ba Jin

Man, Marcus Turuk (still wearing name badge
From yesterday’s meeting
With professor Huff and colleagues)
Inventor of over two hundred applications
For polycarboxlate cement

Man, Robbie Williams