Poetry
Cretan diary
April 2024
Dust from Africa
shrouds the shimmering mountains.
Serrated rocks:
ghostly hallucinating silhouettes
across dull silver sea.
Our coach rounds road's
sinuous curves.
Flanked by olive trees.
white cubic blocks pile up,
punctuate the giant hill slopes.
Girl sweeps her wet steps.
Busy ant trails.
Stout eucalyptus avenues,
fruit-loaded loquat trees,
white and yellow daisies,
purple morning glories,
neat vegetable rows
flank the road to the beach.
"We have arrived at our destination." (Bianca)
"Phoenician juniper - for our cocktail this evening."
Tasselled hyacinth in
flowered orange/lemon orchard.
Blue/white parasite's in flower.
Dragon arum - spotted stem:
horizontal thrusting
purple-black folded flower.
Bee orchid, spider orchid.
mica sparkling pebbles.
Sea's cerulean blue,
enclosed by high green/grey mountain range.
White painted trunks:
old tamarisk trees
flank the beautiful curving beach;
Agios Pantaleimon
built over older church
in 1347
crowns the view.
Kalachoria = Nice Village
Taverna under purple wisteria canopy;
its feathered spires:
leaves just beginning to unfurl.
Old man sorts bucket
full of snails
- ready when
French visitors come.
Welcome hearty lunch,
pale rosé wine.
View: rock "Castello":
orange striped cliff
topped with giant grey globules.
Minoan cave below.
Sand's from Libya - over the horizon.
Swallows nest in open window.
Kalamfka 4 April 2024
Church of the Life-Giving Spring."
43 churches surround the mountain.
Wild gladioli -
in Greek - leaves/knives.
Bee orchid,
tongue orchid,
spider orchid.
Shrouded processional moths
hang in the pine trees
emerge in line
to eat green needles,
kill the trees.
Minoan dead
carefully laid
in their deep trapezoidal-entranced tombs
surrounded by their precious grave-goods,
sealed behind heavy closing stones,
slept peacefully
for millennia
under their sheltering
newly leafed and flowering oaks,
tall asphodel sentinels -
till 1969.
Now earnest old black robed people
walk the flowery paths
to learn the ancient history
of their ancestors.
We delight
in pink and purple orchids, red/blue anemones:
delicate wild irises:
beauty celebrating this special resting-place
for the ancient dead.
Ruth and I
embraced by round stone-walled enclosure;
one deep trapezoid trench
pointing westward from the circle,
sense this place's ancient magic.
But more recent violent death
was here:
a German machine gun post
controlled the road
to Rethymno.
Ruth Harrison:
Dark, hewn-stone entombed,
Did Elysian lilies lighten
their way to oblivion?
Life enhanced by the
Ancient dead:
Senses distracted
From our own mortality.
Armeni 5 April 2024
In this flowery verdant landscape
plane trees follow the stream.
Richly flowered pear tree
marks the watercourse.
Bright scarlet tulips light the field.
Wide fleshy leaves of autumn squill.
Clusters of yellow:
not cowslips, but orchids,
wind-fertilised in this
high mountain landscape:
Snow streaked purple mountain's
magnificent shoulder
crowns the horizon.
Villages cluster
on the spring-line; their living - rich pasture,
patterned orchards, terraces
and tiny fields.
Goats' bells hang
mute, now, in the café.
Strong Greek coffee
gives me a jolt.
White goat, full udders
grazes the fennel, rich green herbs;
her milk turned into
thick yoghurt,
sharp salty cheese.
Poignant war memorial:
woman inscribes
murdered peoples' names.
Imagine fighting over this
precipitous terrain.
Partisans and locals
evading vengeful Germans
who killed them all;
blew up their houses
in reprisal
for capture of a German general.
"Ill Met By Moonlight."
Chatting, they passed by
That woman carved of stone
Facing the firing squad.
Tranquillity creating,
Venerable. Overhead,
The bell did not toll.
Geraki
Bird-shaped wind cowls
Guard the chimneys.
Deep gorges.
Flock of shaggy sheep,
close herded by brown dog.
Panicked goat kid
Heads the wrong way.
Blue reservoir lake.
Below: dry river bed - only a trickle;
water held back in the dam
to supply city below.
Sea glimpsed through cleft cliffs.
Tiny patches of ploughed soil.
Neat quilts of patterned orchards:
Cherry blossom.
Rows of multi-coloured hives.
Neat patterns of pretzel-pruned vines
strung on wires.
Great grey crags above us.
Tree heather - dark green.
Strawberry tree in acid soil,
destroyed by the road.
White iris grown by monasteries.
Tender verdant green of early spring.
Pencil conifers line the roads.
Still the sentinel snow-clad mountain's
highest in the view.
Return to Rethymno
Three canaries trill,
sing to each other
in this quiet alley.
Filtered sun shines through
our cool white wine
in facetted goblets.
Taverna Kyria Maria
Rethymno
5 April 2024
Wide indigo band: ocean's horizon;
Below: stripes of sunlit turquoise.
Green/grey rollers rear over rocks,
topple into curly surf lines:
sudden bursts of white foam
slam the shore -
a blue/white symphony.
Wind ruffles my hair,
sea-spray salts my lips.
Milky foam, endless renewed,
fills the black rocky cove.
Eager plant-searchers gaze downwards,
Searching sandy exposed soil
looking for tiny,
wind-clipped spiny, spiky
maritime flora.
Dense fig-trees fill the hollow,
wind sheltering.
Solitary seagull breasts
the fierce seawind.
Panelia Beach
Conifer sentinels guard the road edge.
Grey clouds shroud
looming White Mountains
They catch the rain first:
verdant landscape.
Ruffled fresh water seeps to meet the salt.
White seaside villa: hopeful
reinforcing rods pointing skywards.
Window of sunlight lights green pasture.
Tall wind-sheared eucalyptus
line the road here,
native Aleppo pines
succeed them, then, linear
white foam of false acacia.
High on our coach seats, we've a
sense of privilege.
Road to Chania
Black submarine conning tower's
silhouetted on the opposite shore.
Wide Souda Bay - sheltered anchorage;
Military base for US communications:
Busy noise:
Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa.
Ferries to Athens,
Greek naval supply boat.
Sombre war cemetery:
"A soldier"... "An airman."
War still rages:
Gaza and Ukraine.
In autumn 2021 Celia Clark was one of 20 artists - and the only poet - whose work was chosen to be incorporated into the design of Southsea's new sea defences. Her poem 'The Sea's an Artist' and extracts from several others were displayed in the D-Day Museum Portsmouth from 6-13 November 2021.
£5 + £1 post and packing from celiadeane.clark@btopenworld.com
Ludlow to Newport
Monday March 6 2023
Abrupt hills: volcanos? shoulder the railway.
Green carpet fields, tree-fringed,
White tucked in farmhouses.
Pylons, angular solar panels climb a hill.
People crammed, knees hemmed in,
Silently endure the crush.
Glimpses of mountains, blued by distance ...
Wales – as we traverse the border country.
We slow for Pontypool.
One off, one on.
Cold blast of air:
Expecting snow.
Exercise
25 February 2023
I come from Nowhere
I come from the restless world
I come from a rootless life, until
I come from Portsmouth, where I've lived for 50 years.
I come from seawashed Southsea, the sound of tides and storms,
I come from Florence Road, familiar bricks and mortar
I come from a corner house, with a blossoming mimosa.
I come from a writing room, piled high with papers
I come from my Apple Mac, where I write my books
I come from my broken-armed writing chair
I come from the places that formed my head, my heart
I come from – and will go to – the earth, the sky, the sea.
Poetry Share Southsea Library
Portsmouth BookFest 2023
Ukrainian flag:
Sky blue, daffodil yellow
Hangs limply from
St. Mary's flagpole.
Clamorous birdmob
Cries "No, no, no, no!"...
Rooks caw in distant trees.
Startling staccato gun bark of nearby crow
Laid across tranquil embroidery
of blackbirds, robins, wren.
Doves sunning on nave roof
Murmur "Coo coo, coo coo"..
Vanish when hawk circles shingled spire.
No peace yet, or coming soon.
St. Mary's Church
Compton
3 April 2022
Buddleigh Salterton
Sea/sky merge
in opalescent grey.
Immense horizon's
end-wrapped in Devon's rich red rocks.
Beach pebbles palest pink.
each flat eclipse
a wave-shaped work of art
wave-ground unceasingly
over millennia,
reminding us
fleeting denizens,
of our
insignifance.
Victory Day at the Imperial War Museum 9 May 2022
Golden seed discs blown from the linden trees
shower the demonstrators:
Russians commemorate their war dead
on Victory Day, while enormous missiles trundle past Putin
in Red Square, tanks and massed marching soldiers
returned from killing people in Ukraine swivel their eyes to him.
Odesa burns.
Here men in khaki fore-and-aft caps, women in frilly dresses,
lay wreaths on the engraved granite plinth, below
a heavy Soviet bell
which does not toll,
donated by National Reserve Bank of Moscow.
It commemorates the millions of Russians
killed in the last World War.
Red flags – in Russian – or Unite's in English
spread and fold in the Maytime breeze.
We're among crowds evacuated from the Imperial War Museum
Was it a bomb threat?
Was it associated with the ceremony - or a counter-demonstration?
No-one knows.
But "The world's a violent place."
Museum motto.
November Sunset - Lockdown
7 November 2020
Thistledowning plastic glove
fingers the shingle:
transparent gossamer touch.
Thronged seafront's crowded
as a summer Sunday.
Smiling, we dodge each other,
slurping coffee or tea,
munching fish and chips;
litter bins crammed with boxes and cups.
Children's neon soles
twinkle, darting from side to side.
Groups sitting close on the beach
Intently share screens.
Wave-watchers, mesmerised,
see crests topple, hear their
rattling withdrawing roar.
A solitary swimmer powers eastward,
his red float bobbing behind him.
Spitank's tall red light's
in dialogue with
green-flashing boat below.
Fisherman's rod arc's
held taut by the sea; he
waits for a twitch in the line.
Setting sun gleams on temporary beach lakes.
Happy dog runs through them,
rippling gold mirrors.
The Island's invisible,
hidden in white mist shroud.
Sun's lost behind white cloud wall
before it sets.
Starlings' synchronised sky--dance
swirls and swoops
over the pier,
magically moving as one,
as they choose where to roost tonight.
My feet tire after so many days,
writing, editing, checking,
finishing the book - at last!
The Sea's an Artist 3 May 2012
The sea's an artist:
Excelling in details:
Sage green wavelets gently
plaiting long skeins of kelp
into a shoreline rim of shiny brown.
Higher, small fronds, bright pink
are delicately laid on brown pebbles,
while the top of the beach is
all broidered in strands
of yellow and white.
Each wave rearranges the shore:
an infinite series of movements
move an infinity of stones,
Each tide grading them, sorting
by colours and size
Each tide a new picture.
Closed
The motorway sign says
"Do Not Enter Portsmouth"
What? Are we closing ourselves in,
Eyam-like to contain the plague?
A port can't do that:
Commodore, Connemara, other freight-laden ships
weave their cross-Channel tracks, unceasing
so that we may eat.
Police: no sea-swimming, park bench sitting
Soaking up the sun?
Virtual escape's possible
If we're web-connected:
phonecalls, facetime,
silent lettered dialogues,
winged poems, virtual cooking, friendship's news
even group sound/sight zooms.
But this strange hiatus, dislocation's
becoming too familiar,
as warming spring blossoms, blooms.
Easter Saturday 11 April 2020
Southsea Rose Garden Lumps Fort
Collapsed magnolia flowers hang from their branches:
white handkerchiefs, carelessly folded.
Expectant robin on wire–thin legs
trills, puffing his chest feathers;
head cocked, expecting crumbs.
Early yellow rose, climbing a pillar
scents the sweet Rose Garden air.
Crossword-engrossed,
same man occupies same seat
in the garden's magic ellipse.
An old friend, not seen for years,
hails us from three metres away,
tells us his story from three days ago.
As he sat on the beach, eating a sausage
before taking his pills, two police ladies,
ignoring his crutch, his deafness plea,
shout, right in his face: "GO HOME"!
Fratton's air quality where he lives,
close to the station's very bad:
red brake dust, black diesel oil
coats his windows.
More peaceful here, high on the fort's coast.
Greygreen lichen rosettes decorate our bench.
Friends and lovers murmur together,
Gaze at the pale blue sea:
Eternal, whatever we humans do.
9 April 2020
Lockdown Easter Saturday Rap
Diagonal waves
trash/kiss the pebble beach,
leaving with a lace-edged
withdrawing hiss.
Bare beach:
human–emptied.
Man climbs steelwork of
pier's swing pirate ship
at present stilled.
Stranger reads poetry, beached,
with friendly hipflask
at his hip.
I spot police boat
ominously anchored
through the pier's obscuring struts,
ready to chide loving father, daughter
arranging dinosaurs across
their shared and stony landscape.
Eagle-eyed Deane spots
police at entrance
to our favoured resting place,
enwrapping Rose Garden.
Now it's barred to us
and to all the others
who find sanctuary there.
Boys gleefully climb their fir tree.
Sudden deep ship boom;
Must be foggy way out there.
My park bench speaks to me:
"In Loving Memory of
Dr. Kevin Knight from
His Partners at Lake
Road Health Centre."
Doctors, nurses, carers
now are dying
before their time
instead of in their
ripe old age:
unnatural deaths.
Ministers' incompetence unmasked
as medics are:
helping failing lungs
keep breathing
as they slow
and then they stop.
How can we get any
sense of an ending
In this deadening
Death parade?
Cumberland House Garden
Rich green grass sward glistens,
daisy–dusted.
Squirrels dart up
grey/green tree trunk
into its white-clouded branches.
Bluebells cluster
chiming, rhyming,
cups of tulips quiver
in the sunny evening breeze.
Seagulls screeching,
crows' staccato cawing,
Deane a–sketching
as I'm writing,
loving being
in the sunny
open air.
II April 2020
Symphony of Skin
Amazing skin
holds us in:
surface/interface/interior:
hair grows through it
after we are dead.
Scratch/caress;
frottage comforts us.
lover's clinch,
friendship's hug:
touch calms and enfolds us.
From reservoirs inside
tears seep, semen spurts, lymph leaks
wounds bleed.
Skin also sweats, dries,
heats in blushes,
shivers when we get too cold.
Skin stretches: elastic, flexible,
over our bones and sinews;
older, it slackens, folds,
wrinkles and sags:
a record of our life
visible there on the surface.
My wounded face
melanoma removed,
is cratered, a burnt out bonfire.
Transplanted neck skin
covers the hole,
plastic stitches rimmed.
Hopefully, one day
the hole will fade
from black/dark red
to normal pink.
Jesus to Mary Magdalene:
"Noli Me Tangere"
(but in Aramaic).
Now we too must not
shake hands, hug, kiss, embrace
Bumping elbows is too much hit and miss.
Only skin's touch keeps us together,
keeps us sane and comforted.
14 April 2020
April in Lockdown
This April is the cruellest month
I've ever known.
After so much rain,
unbroken sun calls us out at last
into the open ... where
we're seared by biting eastern wind,
police-admonished not to sit or congregate
So 'cabined, cribbed, confined',
we're compelled to stay inside.
death and loss is out there
in other people's breath,
their coughs, their panting and their sneezes..
Yet we're alive,
sustained by neighbour's loving help,
offers get us food and drink, and
newspapers, which numb us
with rising numbers of the dead,
pain of the dying, uncomforted.
My doctor fears that I might be
the one to kill her
in touching with gloved hands
glowing heat of an old scar.
16 April 2020
The Quick and the Dead
Remorseless spring
rushes us onward,
yet we resist its incessant ringtone;
virus-fear holds us in:
housebound/home-held;
no blackbird sings.
We're the quick, not the dead;
Not yet written off,
Not yet ROLEd: Recognition
Of Life Extinguished; or
DNR: Do Not Resuscitate.
We're the quick, not the dead,
not rotting, reduced to bones
inside our sunken coffins
in Highland Cemetery's rich orange
and profitable brick earth.
Southsea's many dead
lie quietly herev
under heavy stone,
cross-toppled, writhing ivy wrapped.
Wind-tears salt my wounded cheek.
Hatless, Deane stands by
his parents' gravestone,
remembering happy days;
two very special people
embraced together
in their tomb.
Stately Wellingtonia rules a corner.
heavy chestnut spires,
clusters of bluebells,
garlic spikes
thrust upwards, pastv
John Virtue's fancy cross,
Portsmouth's first
Roman Catholic bishop;
his faithful sister-nuns
singing to us across an open-stone
white book.
Admiral's hat, buckled belt and cane
lie prone in stone.
Brewer's heavy granite temple
weights the earth,
impenetrable catacomb.
Inside, Duprees' dead bodies:
"Died at Wiesbaden", "Died at sea" -
expensively transported
to rest in Southea's homely soil,
funded by breweries
gushing beer.
Soldiers', sailors', airmens'
bright clean white stones:
lives cut short:
too early war deaths.
Dogs' eager yawns
towards their confreres
reined sharply back;
owners pull them apart
to maintain their distance
as we must too
Sad, foot weary,
We trudge slowly through the streets
homewards;
another heavy day
is ending.
19 April 2020
Southsea Common
Daisy-snow sprinkles the un-played-on sports field.
Running shoes' red soles' rhythm rapidly recedes
from my much slower sauntering pace.
Sheltered, sun-warmed, lying on
my favourite S-shaped seat,
I clutch my hat from north wind's snatch.
Solitary kite's streamer flutters Solent-wards.
Old fat white dog sniffs at interesting grass tuft.
Brittany Ferry's sunlit foredeck slides along
the seafront, harbour-wards.
Two golfers a long way apart
aim in each other's general direction:-
high risk strategy if you don't want
a ball in your nut!
I relish this wonderful wide green expanse
I'm crossing, thanks to military defence,
open to all of us, otherwise
confined within our walls
alone at home.
20 April 2020
Rage
Rage-flash contracts space:
police chase children out of the sea;
break up knots of clustering teenagers,
scour the beaches of meditating sunbathers;
instead of saving vulnerable
women and children
from being beaten or even killed.
Recovering prime minister loiters
in his luxury country house.
Inept politicians fail to order
much needed masks and gowns
which prevent invisible contagion
spreading death from face to face.
Relentless sun shines down, indifferent,
day after day,
while our lives contract
to imprisoning housewalls,
while monstrous spring advances,
colours blazing, burgeoning,
blooming,
surrounds us all.
Theatre of Camber
Queen Jean surveys her queendom:
The Camber's enclosing waters:
yachtfilled, old salts inhabited;
busy fishing boats
coming and going;
rusty scallop chains
heaved over stern thwarts.
Footpathing families pay her homage.
Waving a greeting,
from her balcony,
graciously,
she blesses them all.
22 April 2020
Layers
Seagull circles overhead
soaring the thermals
above Myrtle's verdant garden.
Sky's blue vault
looks infinite,
but isn't.
Ionosphere's insulating layer
protects us from deep space.
Inside our lockdown bubble
we're frighteningly distanced
from nearby life and death:
struggles in hospital and care home
where medics work
unprotected by visors, gloves and aprons:
layers not ordered by government,
not yet delivered
by army convoy.
I'm lying prone
on curving concrete steps
in warming sun,
listening to brother and sister -
sitting safe distances apart -
catching up on recent family news.
Busy robin's nesting
inside those dense red leaves,
making the branches shake.
Pale California poppies
furl themselves
for evening,
as we slowly say goodbye.
23 April 2020
Beach
Seakale's bursting into flower;
roots two metres down anchors it
in shifting shingle.
Tight green buds unclenching
reveal its round white flowers
densely clustered;
sweet-scenting the sea air.
So is the smell of pot
or maybe vaping
two boys are enjoying
up on the ramparts.
Joyously, two dogs
nuzzle and playfight,
rolling over and over
as we're forbidden to do
to friends or family.
Magical evening calms us
as blue-grey lambent light
fades slowly over luminous sea.
25 April 2020
Lockdown Silence
From our upper circle bed
the street slopes upward to the sea.
But Southsea linear theatre's
eerily silent, even for a Sunday.
Cars and cycles swish across the mid-view;
Pram-pushers determinedly seek the seafront;
panting heavily; runners
swerve their pathwaysv
to avoid us.
But to my deafened ears
no seagulls shriek
no sparrows cheep
(vanished years ago)
no voices sound,
no blackbird sings.
26 April 2020
Blue: the new normal?
"Essential travel only"
My right hand's skin rejects
the alien feel of wrinkled blue
plastic glove he offers me
to sift my way though
his many giant prints
of Vernon's demolishing:
cranes, earth piles, deep excavations,
stark in black and white.
We three sit in plastic chairs
widely spaced around large sheet of cardboard,
his album open in between us:
this weird encounter
of people who know each other well,
and probably are all well,
while the pale ginger cat
stares at our unnatural behaviour,
not stroking and caressing him.
Bluebells' blur:
April's glory
passes in a flash.
High tide's blue slab
lures us seawards
through acres of shiny
alien gravestones
past ruminating cows
over hardened clay earth ruts
to seapath: close translucent waves
lap gently
as we veer to left and right
from cyclists, walkers
bouncing stones
flat to the bounded horizon.
Up a thickly wooded lane
with a trickle of water flowing seawards:
three people, open bottles in their hands,
laugh at Deane's perennial joke"
"Candy's dandy, liquor's quicker"
No pub to go to
so bring your own!
A broader avenue: Pook Lane's
boundaried by magnificent trees:
chestnut candles, limp new leaves
quivering in heavy sunlight.
A pale women with a curly dog:
cancer diagnosis postponed
for forty weeks:
a message to turn anyone blue,
asks, across the necessary distance,
if Southsea's seafront's closed:
her car-bound husband likes
to look at passing ships
while she walks their dog
across the Common
All these encounters
distanced, made unreal,
yet the virus makes us talk – as
we might never have done before.
Warblington April 26 2020
Forbidden swim
"Get out of the sea!"
On the very day Bondi's open again:
"WE'VE GOT OUR BEACH BACK!'
written across a jubilant swimmer's skin,
Myrtle is ordered to stop her swim.
To be in the water as long as possible,
she swims, with the tide pulling her
all the way back,
to find her clothes.
Police crunching along the shingle.
find it hard to keep pace with her.
Hurriedly getting dressed,
her towel drops
that's when the police depart
Bondi's beach is 'open' to swimmers
but "running, sunbathing
or even walking on sands'
Forbidden".
Please tell me:
Where's the logic in that??
30 April 2020
Coffee Cup Eastney
Skull and crossbones
slap their flagpole.
Child chuckles, yelps,
trying to get my attention.
I'm prone, eyes closed,
on this narrow wooden bench.
All the way from their flat
near Fort Cumberland
his parents have walked here
with their disabled child
Boy tries to drape
piece of string like a necklace
around an upright timber.
As they rested,
"We had to get up, when
the police approached."
Bright day: seafront's thronged.
Skeins of wind-etched cloud
blown seaward by strong west wind.
White laces the eternal blue
of earth's protective vault.
Deane draws the barracks
paints brick red, chrome yellow
of two AA vans:
drivers shooting the breeze.
A pair of parked ambulances,
empty, doors open
confer, nose to nose
by the blocked off road
along the seafront.
Where are the drivers?
By Canoe Lake
a man splutters
right into my face.
Will I get his virus
when I get home?
Fear makes me obsessively
scrub my lip
with soap and water.
Then I forget
and rest again.
Saturday 2 May 2020
In/Out?
Golden-wedding'd
tennis champion Ann's
stayed indoors
all these weeks,
protecting Trevor:
cancer-recovering,
vulnerable.
Our tai chi Florence,
masked, hatted, double-gloved,
greets us lovingly:
we've missed seeing
her perform: oldsters together
moving rhythmically
to gentle Chinese music.
Friends wave benignly
from their first floor balcony,
fluttering their Union Jack.
"I'll have a lot more by Friday!"
One sunburning cheek
the other breezed-cooled;
willow fronds dancing
along the chimney pots.
Cathedral bells' mellow chimes
ring passing time.
Small birds twitter,
Seagulls talk and squawk.
Less vulnerable, so less afraid,
we're out,
enjoying hot summer sun
in spring.
Garden of Rest St. Thomas Cathedral Old Portsmouth 6 April 2020
Rowing Club Picnic
Ship's wake slams the concrete step
Waves suddenly spurt over my bare feet.
Abigail flaunts her antique shawl
worn in memory of her dad
just died at 52
of a heart attack:
strange distanced funeral
in Tunbridge Wells;
only ten spaced out people
allowed to attend.
Judging the wind direction
she threw his ashes into the sea
with a blue vodka libation
to say goodbye.
Police challenge
but let her be.
She believes the virus's
made the world
a better place:
clean air and cleaner sea;
we're kinder and more attentive
to how each other really feels.
Lean grey frigate puts to sea
crew distanced along the deck;
soon a faraway silhouette
disappearing eastwards.
We've a grandstand view
from Rowing Club steps.
Her red-crossed England t-shirted friend
calls us to admire his
pebble-skimming skills.
Dogs swim purposefully out to sea,
obediently return: ball/stick in mouth.
Hovercraft rises, swings to seaward:
Swells slam the concrete once again.
Slim enormous turbine blade
balanced along a small coaster's deck
heads harbour-wards.
Cross-legged boys next to us
smoke a joint
then cycle away.
Prosecco bottle nestles in a crevice.
Deane remembers his mother
launching a boat here
built by the club, who named it Freda
watched by three admiring proud small boys:
Adam, Tom and Tim,
loving being here with their grandma.
High tide's pluck and suck's
my lullaby, concrete cradled,
blue chinks shine through
my white straw hat.
Friday 8 May
VE Day 75 years on
Queen Jean, glass in hand:
"I think I'm the oldest person here!"
remembers VE Day;
She'll tell me the story
when her son lets her out.
Hard not to kiss and hug her.
Draped flags flap
on balconies and forecourts.
A White Ensign
big enough for a ship's
hung over a roofline,
where bronze Nelson waits to
board his Victory.
Under cosies: teapots,
cakes on cake-stands
friendly chats to strangers
in 40s head-wrap or peaked cap;
but because of distancing
we're not invited to the party.
We trudge our way slowly homeward
To our own welcoming cups of tea.
Virtual Mayor-making - and death
Will it be virtual Mayor-making - or
feathered hat, heavy chain
weighing down his head and chest?
Rob's wistful wish:
this year's ceremony
will be remembered - as different,
even if nothing actually takes place.
What's happening to
his constituents
in the confined spaces
of Somerstown's dense flats?
Even on Grand Parade's
wide pavement, it's difficult
to talk and keep apart.
East Hampshire's dead:
Mayoress Elect's work:
All cremated, not buried
in the five extensive cemeteries.
No one's died so far in
Old Portsmouth,
but many in the city have succumbed
the further north you go.
9 May
VE Day 75
Broad searchlight blades
intersect, separate and cross,
flare the Common's trees,
probing beams towards the city,
watched by crowds of silent people
silhouetted against night sky.
Bright Venus sparkles high overhead.
Red/green paths of light
colour the Swashway.
Parked fleet glimmers on the horizon.
Searchlight symbolism's understoodv
but feeling's muted;
we're sombre in unnatural quiet:
no shouting, dancing, drinking, coupling,
nor any flag-waving
do we feel like doing
now.
9 May 2020
Sea's free! Ebb tide
Little boy weighs the heft
of his chosen stone.
Mother/father/son clash their
red plastic Transformers together:
mock battle on the pebbly beach;
unstopped, unscolded
perhaps - at last?
Little girl's mesmerised
by uncertainty:
will waves pull away
- or come back again,
to flood her toes?
Bald men flaunt their shaven chests
then flatten, delighted,
immersing themselves
at last in pale blue water.
Father holds his bare bottomed baby:
to pee, then washes him:
salty baptism;
All unhindered, unharassed
Has the beach been liberated
from the police?
At VE Day it was barricaded
blocked by barbed wire
no swimming, sunbathing then.
Delicious rose scent greets us
as we enter the Rose Garden's magic elipse.
Flurries of squirrels climb the pine tree.
Yellow roses flare against
the pergola supports,
suffuse the air with their
special golden scent.
Silent group strung along a fence:
what are they looking at?
A squirrel nibbling something white.
"We Russians, living here, also
have red ones back home too!"
Caroline feeds her wheel-chaired son
caresses his short black hair, his feet,
tenderly puts on his star-girt socks on,
and then his ankle boots.
Blackbirds practice their operatic solos;
after our long confinement
consoling us with music
in the peaceful evening air.
Unnoticed, yet we share their space
Sexed up vixen yips at 2,
sets off deep loud doggy barks
together they reclaim the night.
Attic-trapped squirrel's
captured, boxed,
and liberated in a distant park.
Sea-swimming dog rounds the Castle
keeping even pace with humans.
Skirting board blur of darting movement:
grey mouse in unexpected place.
Knot of flatworms
wrestles, writhing, working
in the compost bin,
I knock them earthwards
as the lid comes off
to give them yet
more food to eat.
Balanced in her precarious
drainpipe nest:
downy feather messages
float on air shafts:
our pigeon coos.
We barely notice
their existence,
yet we together
share the space.
15 May 2020
Glory
Sentinel beech,
leaves almost
fluorescent green,
flanked by two white-laden mays,
stands guard:
presaging the Monarch's Way.
Magnificent avenue
of towering beeches
framing distant Stanstead House
just as they were planted to do.
Fierce wind tosses their very tops.
While they shelter us
from the freezing northern breeze,
one great forest tree's been lost:
a mighty oak, torn apart.
The broken trunk,
triangulated, spears
many dying branches
covering the ground in heaps of drying leaves.
Standing stump's
blackened wound
reveals its weakening decay.
Giant grey beech trunks, prone,
lie like stranded, landed whales.
Delicate bracken trellises.
Late nodding bluebells.
Foxglove spires
begin to show their colour.
Newly planted trees:
sunlit trunks in
white protective sleeves,
jostle, close together:
augury of new life;
hope of renewal/liberation,
back to our ordinary,
populated existence:
all we long for
- in hope or anger,
but still await.
Stanstead Forest 13 May 2020
Nearing the end of lockdown?
Exuberant jet-skis swirl
and turn, spurting plumes
of sunlit spray.
Did we see a paddle-boarder
standing alone
in the middle of the sea?
Welsh Mervyn works on his autobiography;
it's only the third time
he and Alexander have
come to the seafront
since the whole lockdown thing began.
Icecreams! Swimming! Lollipops!
Paddling! Swimming! Chatting!
Sitting in the sun!
Wave-ruffled, blue, blue sea's
the background
to whizzing skateboarders, tattooed runners,
racing cyclists and sit-up-and-begs.
Father stoops to give
his chest-bound baby
her first scent of roses:
glowing purple, paling violet, hard bright red.
Woman sniffs the marguerites.
Crows caw, other birds twitter,
resident blackbird chuckles his alarm.
Who knew Portsmouth
had so many different dogs?
High on our perch
over the entrance,
Colin hails us, wheeling Adam,
wearing his Walking Hat
on his way to
our usual rendezvous.
Deane, "ancient monument"
finds drawing 'Southsea Rose Garden'
backwards, difficult.
Curly-haired, bearded Tommy
who runs North End's Thatcher's pub
shares a bottle with his
friendly sports-capped mate.
"I've lived in Portsmouth all my life,
but I've never been here,
never ever seen the Rose Garden before!
Exploring Portsmouth on our bikes!"
Hannah reads aloud the flowing Arabic:
from her illuminated Koran;
tells us she's a doctor
driving to Winchester
very early; went to the High School;
her twin teaches geographyv
at PGS!
Heavily laden container ship: 'Yang Ming'
progresses slowly towards Southampton,
towers over No Man's Land Fort.
Another, too far away to see it clearly:
Cruise ship or is it hauling cargo?
But anchored fleet
on the horizon's
going nowhere.
How bored their crews must be:
even more confined than we are.
"Stay Home",
we're released from,
at least, partially,
at last.
Saturday 16 May 2020
Field full of folk
Two Spanish girls flirt their black lace fans:
illustration in an antique book – for real!
"Four ducklings in the Rock Gardens pond!"
No sign of them, only the drake,
swimming in circles.
Black-headed gulls weave their elegant
invisible tapestry over our heads.
In the sea two kayakers,
one instructs the other
to paddle backwards:
her words clearly audible
over the soughing waves.
Sugar-mouse pink swimmers
emerge from the water.
Hopeful fishermen
on shore and boat-bound,
try for fish rising
as the sun sinks
towards the horizon.
Small brown coffee van
dispenses cheering paper cups
by the Chinese bandstand.
Happy Prosecco parties share their joy.
Footballers, cricketers, swerve-ballers, kick-boxers
fill green Castle Field:
colour and movement.
Everyone smiles, relishes our freedom
to come alive again together,
in our precious open space.
19 May 2020
The Senses of Portsmouth
The sweet smell of the sea,
the vibrant colors of summer
radiating in a blinding glow.
Birds singing, people laughing
and the sound of the wind
blowing peacefully through the grass and bushes.
Many different hues of green,
all with flowers that smell like
SPF 50 sun-tan lotion.
The blur of beaches and buildings
all along the coastline.
A couple of sailboats
on the horizon of the sea,
waiting to be used
once quarantine is over.
Henry J Fast Aged 10 and ¾
Monday May 18th 2020
West wind storm
Yesterday? "Need to travel? If poss, walk or cycle."
South coast hills obscured by thick white mist.
Today we're sheltering from a gathering storm
by Langstone Harbour.
Sunlight glints on sea-filled
coupled-cockle shells.
West wind-driven, rapid cloud and sun
colour the harbour in successive stripes:
leaf green, pale sage, dark ruffled green,
aquamarine, ridge-patterned navy blue;
decorated with white dots of swimming seagulls
drifting slowly on the ebbing tide.
Wind devils' downdraft scours quick circles.
Ebbtide caresses the anchored bladder wrack.
Translucent waves pulse the shorebank.
Tall poplars, thick woods, shelter us
from the onslaught of punching air;
their leaves sigh and flutter, or,
torn off, land on roughened water.
Wind's fierce roar's louder and louder:
amplified now to a full blown gale.
Unperturbed, two fishermen,
spaced rod's length apart,
one hidden under enormous umbrella,
scan the waves, patiently waiting
for a fish to bite.
Light: changing, spotlights Hayling shore.
Cyclists whizz past, navigating
the rough surfaced track.
Tiny dogs, smaller than cats,
step delicately by,
accompanying their family.
"Keep fit, Clarkies!" shouts Bill Tremlett,
digging in his drought hard soil.
"Yesterday dismasted yacht was rescued
by a man in passing rib."
Rotating radar screen on tall black mast
marks Eastney's sewage tanks.
Toddler hoisted off father's shoulders
runs to catch up with mother and pushchair.
Little children smile, wave in greeting,
astride their tiny pink/blue trikes.
"Save the bees", "Orlando Florida", "Endure":
chest-mounted slogans pacing past.
The flattened Mulberry sinks more deeply;
broken in wartime 40's casting;
never made it to Normandy.
Blown grit coats my teeth.
I relish storm, sun and panorama,
wide cloud-strewn sky and
ever-changing sea.
23 May 2020
Reunited
Silver carp, gold finned,
cruises slowly,
till brawling drakes
land suddenly on pale brown pond;
he flicks his tail and vanishes.
Dense yellow flags' thickets
glimmer in reflecting surface.
Our family, reunited
after two long moths.
Roman and Nilla – taller
tell us about their days:
two hours' schoolwork
"Then we chill!"
Pale see-through willow fronds
sway gently in the evening breeze.
We've clambered up the steepest slope
through garlic scented beech woods
hard going, but we made it
to the top
over the railway tunnel,
Roman carrying the wicker basket
trying to find a shaded spot
for us all to sit and eat.
Keep Out!" "Private Property. Buriton Estate."
Barbed wire to blue-flowered field.
Nowhere at Dean Barn,
so we backtrack
to the South Downs Way,
find a lush green meadow:
perfect!
Tree shade, hot sun, blowy air.
Herd of copper coloured bullocks
sit companiably together,
red-tagged ears, tails flicking
biting flies away.v
Over cow pats, dry clay ruts,
shaded hedge, we walk tov
felled forest;
return through shady woods
past lime-trucks deep in coombs;
under the railway – passing train
to Buriton's peaceful pond:
tranquil, beautiful - and
shared.
24 May 2020
Cooling evening air
blows in from the frenetic street
through shallow Mughal arches
to this peaceful temple precinct,
raised two flights above the mundane
trading of everyday.
Smiling men shed their sandals
and disappear – though the temple's
closed till after six:
it's a festival day,
the season of weddings and celebrations.
A patient guardian in green/gold sari
reminds us to take off our shoes;
scrutinises us across the courtyard.
She sites below a delicate
scalloped white ceiling.
The two oriels, half-domed, frame
five arches to the covered court.
In the background,
a pair of ancient wooden doors,
elaborately locked and bolted,
stand guard over the temple's
inner secrets.
From open shutters,
cooking curry scents the sunset air
along with the smell of lavender
the colour also,
of the delicate paintwork.
Intense negotiations continue
in a side office – where something's examined
in a strong light under magnification:
hard sparkling chips from the core of the earth
bought and sold here.
A girl brings another, in bright flowered trousers,
a red magazine – gratefully accepted.
A mangy dog barks at us angrily,
howls in misery,
bites Deane's ankles,
till he's fed some sweetmeats
by a plump woman clad in
green and gold.
Curly haired young man
chuckles to his mobile
as Deane paints his vision
of this tranquil, inhabited
Indian sanctuary.
Devzi Ji Ka Maindiz Johari Bazaar Jaipur, 14 November 2017
Pigeons in pairs
swoop across the red rectangle.
The boy with a giant pink flag;
the master pigeon-wallah,
waves it languidly
in the cooling air.
The waiter comes to check on progress
on Deane's watercolour
of this brick Brutalist courtyard.
Its regular recession and projection,
each storey varied;
some recessed and some brought forward,
some with pierced balconies
covered with roses,
red, white and yellow
spilling over the ledge.
Slow swimmers measure the pool length
while I enjoy the quiet luxury
beneath me, of soft green and blue towels
draped over the sunlounger.
The sun sinks in the sky,
scissored by pigeons' continual flight paths,
swift warp and weft
to the sound of jangly music
while fellow guests walk around slowly,
minds far away
at their mobiles' endplace.
Long drawn out phrases
of the eloquent call to prayer
rise and fall, slantwise
over the hotel enclave
as the sun's light fades.
Frangipani scents the hot red sandstone
greeting us as we pass into
the wide interior.
ITC Rajputana Jaipur, 13 November 6.30 pm
Indian Road Rap – Jaipur to New Delhi 8am to 4pm 15 November 2017
"Great India!"
"Blow Horn!"
"Save Girl Child!"
"Plant Trees!"
"Work is Worship":
Yellow clad women work, crouching, planting,
backs bent hoeing,
cutting up harvested branches,
banging clothes in water on concrete
cleaning dirt out of them,
walk straight-backed to carry heavy head loads.
Men sit, drinking chai,
or lie, prone on charpoys.
Rich earth, brown furrows,
stalk stacked sheaves
in circular stooks.
On board men sell us – or fail to entice us
to part with our rupees, for
newspapers, leather bags, tea and spices.
People scooter past, one/two women sidesaddled.
Gaudy lorries, loaded: glass, cement, grain
pass us, hooting.
"Hotel King" "Hotel Prince"
compete for giant wallspace,
always one kilometre ahead!
Field dust, yellow, coats everything,
hangs in the air,
making smog, with burning stubble;
sunlight intensifies, densifies it,
making it harder for us to breathe.
Building, tearing down = human energy.
India moves itself on diesel-fuelled wheels.
Round cowpat/straw fuel discs,
stacked, circular, like flat cupcakes.
Complacent cows, grounded,
watch the frantic humans
with slow moving eyes.
"Be what you wear!"
"Live, love, eat!"
"A Complete Family Restaurant!"
"Air-Conditioned School".
"Ashok Leyland
Mahendra First Choice Cars,
Any car service."
"Navy/Army/Airforce/Police".
Concrete skeletons: Unfulfilled dreams. 134 km to Delhi
"Raffles International School"
Giant politicians' smiles.
"Touching Life Every Day
Sarya Ratna Prayang".
"Take Service Lane:
Adhuik Hotel"
"Gangaus Midway:
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner"
Anushree
"4 Seasons Food Court"
"Bikana Valu".
"Valvoline".
Bulging yellow stacked sacks
pass us, heavy, on loaded lorry.
Wingless, two planes are being dismembered.
How did they get there?
Abrupt hills loom over the dead flat plain,
others blasted apart, destroyed for building stone.
"Hotel Grand Tara 24 x 7:
Luxury rooms in Budget"
White sheets and towels draw lines in the sunshine.
Tower blocks appear in thickening haze.
"North highway Xpress".
Suddenly the coach slows its progress
veers violently leftwards
under the flyover.
We go slowly back again,
stop by piles of bluish cement dust,
heading for a motorway café.
A man cracks nuts on the flat-roofed
Walnut Company.
"Raata International School:
huge complex in the middle of nowhere:
"Future ready schools" at Dughera.
"Amity University Jaipur"
"Motimahal Restaurant"
"Muskan Mindway RC Restaurant"
"Any Time is Icecream Time"
"KKP Cement, Build Safe"
"Great Weekend Getaway: Tree House".
Tower blocks and sheave stacks.
"Stop! This project is worth a visit"
"Heavy Vehicle Keep Left!"
Neemrana Moterbike Factory: Industrial Area.
"County Line Logistics"
"Slow, Horn"
"Greenlan Laminates"
"Pepsi Miranda".
And these are just the signs in English
Giant concrete pigeon's
poised for flight
from the top balcony
of pink/grey multi-storey house.
"PayTM Accepted Here."
"To pay the toll
Scan payTM QR Code
At the Counter!"
Smashed up car
No getting out of that one.
Giant Hindi signs, tops joined together,
form a horizontal architecture
I cannot read.
Shahjehanpur:
Industrial area.
"Dream Marriage 150 Lahks"
= Lovers' Hotel?
Parked khaki lorries – by government decree
their loads and drivers marooned
110 kilometres from Delhi
to combat the capital city's smog.
"Have to take right turn here
because of jam further down."
"Horn, wait 4 side please":
Lorry full of sacks.
Blue brewery, "Herbal tastings".
Now we're going the wrong way
down the motorway.
"Saving Lives:
In Case of Accident, Dial This Number"
Lorry overturned
concrete piles spilled
in awkward heap
blocks the sideroad.
"David is leading the way":
small white car
"for Goliath [us] to follow."
"All India Parmit"
"Tax Collection Point".
Giant steel cylinder, parked,
going no further.
Lorry, headfirst into a bushy side ditch.
"Hero Corp".
"Ladies and Gentlemen:
I've never seen anything like this."
We're now driving directly into oncoming traffic
veering across lanes,
roaring over ruts and potholes
and deepsided ditches.
Square brick kiln chimneys
rear behind dense vegetation.
Sudden horn noise
"Golden education".
People crowd round a dusty red field space:
broad-chested men
wrestle in quick bouts.
Maeve consults her dictionary
doing her French homework.
A tethered buffalo raises its head
over the roof of the lorry it's carried in.
A man's perched, resting,
on the roof of his truck, tarpaulined,
going nowhere, like all the others.
More miles and miles of state-stalled lorries:
No end of waiting for them in sight.
Another checkpoint
manned by the army
armed with big sticks
aimed to keep order.
Now huge industries
In sheds on both sides:
How are their workers getting to work? 95 Km to Delhi
On the side road
we veer round a tented holy shrine
with a central blue draped mound:
is it a body, lying in waiting for burial?
"Asahi India Glass Ltd."
"Tot Copper Ltd."
"CRRC Pioneer"
"Jindad Buildas"
"HSIIDC Welcomes You To"
Khaki-wrapped canvas covers
a train carriage on a low loader.
A factory pours its thin stream of white smoke
into the already foggy air,
as we rear and rock over deep ruts,
back confronting the oncoming traffic
behind another loaded bus:
maybe a bit safer that way?
We overtake a red tractor
pulling a trailer loaded with orange bricks.
"Mannot Veg Dhaba
Just a 25 Minute Drive".
"Bolt express"
"Police Assistant Booth" – empty.
"OM Logistics Limited,v
Making Business Simple"
Not when it's stuck
In the middle of a traffic jam.
Another shrouded stalled railway carriage.
Rows of red tractors lined up on a trackbed.
Punjabi Urban Dhaba.
Police force us off the flyover.
"We got caught by a volcano once."
"At least we're moving".
Green water channel beside us is static
green slime; black banana skin
floats in concrete compartment.
We're not moving, lorries inch past us;
now we're as stalled as the opposite lorry jam.
We're stationary behind another coach
full of Westerners.
A fancily dressed lorry suddenly rears towards us, side-on,
Gasps of horror from the people who see it.
"Just look on the bright side, ladies and gents.
We're not flying out until tomorrow"
The other coach turns back across our track.
The boy goes ahead to check what's happening.
Ambulance siren.
Now our guide's got out
What's he going to do for us?
"Supply chain solutions".
It's a broken down lorry blocking our progress.
"Use dipper at night."
O Kara's red/gold tassels sway in the dust.
A crowd of men could push it out of our pathway.
Driver's back, looking resolute,
moving cautiously forward.
"Visit Again Travel Tourism":
another crowded bus sways past us.
"Shree Amber Karni"
Our boy bravely stops the traffic
past a menacing lorry
loaded with sharp steel girders.v
We're on the right/left side again!
Good speed ahead! 77 Km still to go.
Nearing Delhi, a white car with dead roses
fixed all over it
passes us on the left hand side.
Six horses, sideways on, look over
the wooden edge of their lorry.
A turbaned man tends a large flock of sheep,
moving slowly along the side road.
A crashed lorry, front stove in,
Is towed to a repair centre full of others.
I'm losing the will to continue
this real - time record 2.25pm
Entering Delhi:
"This taxi respects women".
Soldiers in face masks
guarding the barracks.
Two sit in the bus stop
holding their guns.
Gkurkas in barracks
Flash kukris in unison.
"Foot Over Bridge".
"Speed Calming Go Slow".
Man in a silver suit
walks the highway.
Man asleep on the pavement
toes pointing our way.
Jungle in the city.
Eternal monkeys leap and preen
oblivious to passing traffic.
We made it at 4 – at last.
Celia Clark
It also moves:
solid rain, rushing torrents, unceasing tides, welling springs, seeping rills, sprinkling mists,
snow: powder and crust, melts.
But what's underneath the surface/skin?
Our bodies: water:
blood pumps, lymph swells, menstrual red flows, urine gushes,
saliva and semen spurt, sweat drips;
eyes, fluid bathed, cry
and smear – brine tears.
Immersed in sea,
only our skin
holds us in;
not dissolved, but moving through
that vital element we share
that primal soup
we lived in, gilled.
With my curved shape,
I connect
with my amphibian,
bathed, rocked, supported, lulled
though, lunged only for air,
confined to surface.
But what's below, terrifies..
Beautiful depths:
Glass clear, shimmering green, turquoise, aquamarine, indigo
What are those shadows?
Powerful currents, churning tides, swaying seaweeds, flashing fish, transparent jellies:
Another domain,
unknown,
like the fluids
beneath our skin.
Glendalough Ireland 19 October 2012
Robin Hood Gardens Poplar 30 July 2012
Two giant walls:
Tall concrete honeycomb
Wrap protectively
Round the green pointed hill,
Its winding paths
Overgrown now,
No longer trimmed;
Its mosaic turtles, fish,
Still sparkle
In the long grass;
The rose pergola
Still lovely, blooms in red and white.
"Gather round!
Our Olympics is about to begin!"
Children leap over hurdles,
Their parents serve
Strawberries and cream in glass bowls;.
The playcourt vibrates in vibrant hues.
A community of many colours
In their holiday gear
Celebrate summer together.
Indifferent towers
of Canary Wharf and cheap
Blank-eyed flats
Glower to the south
Is that what's to come here?
A faded picture says:
"Here's your new homes"
But this patch of earth
Is where we live
Happily together!
As the world competes at Stratford
just up the road,
Is this vital communal flame
Condemned to quenching
For greater profit?
The Smithsons' ideal vision
Of city living
To be lost – for ever?
Obliterated
Its people blown away?
America's Cup
Sea's slosh and suck
slam the concrete steps,
throwing up heavy white foam:
Bubbles cool my brown legs.
Shark-shaped sails,
towering verticals,
giant black wings,
narrow wind-catchers
slice seawards,
fly the shining hulls,
lifted on slim aerofoils
to slice through
neon green water.
It also moves:
Solid rain, rushing torrents, unceasing tides, welling springs, seeping rills, sprinkling mists,
snow: powder and crust, melts.
But what's underneath the surface/skin?
Our bodies: water:
blood pumps, lymph swells, menstrual red flows, urine gushes,
saliva and semen spurt, sweat drips;
eyes, fluid bathed, cry
and smear – brine tears.
Immersed in sea,
only our skin
holds us in;
not dissolved, but moving through
that vital element we share
that primal soupwe lived in, gilled.
With my curved shape,
I connect
with my amphibian,
bathed, rocked, supported, lulled
though, lunged only for air,
confined to surface.
But what's below, terrifies..
Beautiful depths:
Glass clear, shimmering green, turquoise, aquamarine, indigo
What are those shadows?
Powerful currents, churning tides, swaying seaweeds, flashing fish, transparent jellies:
Another domain,
unknown,
like the fluids
beneath our skin.
Glendalough Ireland 19 October 2012
Robin Hood Gardens Poplar 30 July 2012
Two giant walls:
Tall concrete honeycomb
Wrap protectively
Round the green pointed hill,
Its winding paths
Overgrown now,
No longer trimmed;
Its mosaic turtles, fish,
Still sparkle
In the long grass;
The rose pergola
Still lovely, blooms in red and white.
"Gather round!
Our Olympics is about to begin!"
Children leap over hurdles,
Their parents serve
Strawberries and cream in glass bowls;
The playcourt vibrates in vibrant hues.
A community of many colours
In their holiday gear
Celebrate summer together.
Indifferent towers
of Canary Wharf and cheap
Blank-eyed flats
Glower to the south
Is that what's to come here?
A faded picture says:
"Here's your new homes"
But this patch of earth
Is where we live
Happily together!
As the world competes at Stratford
just up the road,
Is this vital communal flame
Condemned to quenching
For greater profit?
The Smithsons' ideal vision
Of city living
To be lost – for ever?
Obliterated
Its people blown away?
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