VIEW FROM NORTHWOOD PARK

Posted by Admin on 19 April 2008, 12:00 am

It was not wise to sit and face,
across a suave declivity of grass,
a panoramic scene that must evoke
the poignant past – disturbing old regrets.
A green and white façade that once
was Bateman’s School, wherein,
had Fate not ruled it out,
a better education might have been
my lot.
Beyond, the many-windowed school
where I was taught, with basic gaps
that yet remain unfilled.
And, farther still, behind the slate-roofed town,
the crane, beneath whose balanced arm
in bygone days the grey destroyers lay,
awaiting turbines, boilers, and
the armaments of war – those ships
on which, a truant from the work I loathed,
I basked and dreamed above Medina’s flow.
The cloud-wrack breaks, anaemic light
illumines distant downs and Whippingham’s
dark spire, locating Albert’s fane.
A schoolgirl, homeward bound,
and climbing steps some yards from where
I sit, now conjures out of time
a girl of twelve secreting tokens in
my hanging coat – a child who would
have been my friend.
Enough! Get up and go!
With maudlin thoughts a-probe,
to linger is to weep.