FOOTPATH

Posted by Admin on 16 April 2008, 12:00 am

‘The Stiles’ we called that narrow way
which leads one to the Recreation Ground –
a pleasant walk in our young days
when Father Time at tortoise pace
passed by, and post-war peace enwrapped
untroubled lives – the mud and stench
of Flanders’ bloody salients at one
with Agincourt and Waterloo.
But now one still alone remains –
the path is overgrown, and shoulder high,
and higher, the wild chervil grows,
to channel there a world of green
and white – where nettles know no check,
where brambles tangle with the may;
with all adjacent screened from view –
a blessing now, perhaps, for on
one side the pasture-land has failed
to keep the factories at bay, and trash
its rusting obscene train intrudes;
while stumps of stricken elms proclaim
that Nature, like Mankind, can play
a vandal’s role.