Wordsworth’s
Birthday (237th)
Missed the ten-o-one
and took the five past
In the wrong direction, under the hill.
Penge East, Kent House and Beckenham Junction.
Turned-over soil
in allotments, crumbling,
Rich and grey, a deal less clay than our own.
The young cherry holds open white-bloomed arms.
You were the bard
who called a spade a spade.
“Spade!” your ode to one begins. The gardens
And gables go on into the distance,
And every mile or
so, the stone-built tower
Or spire, that makes us far from Victoria,
Launching parishes out on the brick-tide.
Such a soft blue
day the pale-capped pylon
Points to from the site of Crystal Palace,
Elegant Eiffel-like latticework spike.
The nineteen past,
to Victoria non-stop,
Through the clay ridge the pleasure dome stood on.
Five days more and the oaks are truly green,
Fine loose laces
of their flowers hanging.
Now they show the breath, the blood of April
Only, beneath the skin, ‘the finer breath
Of knowledge’,
remembering their future.
The earth
exhales the mist of a wet March.
The white points of the may are on their way.
John Gibbens
