I was thinking I would devise a stone,
fairy-like thing - a gem, a masterpiece!
Culled from the purple definition of
an evening train; the workday morning dark
of a church square bristling against
the city lights with whistling, waking birds!
Should I of necessity add a pinch
of spirit? - where ladies echo again
and again, and the street is always large
and looming with buses, and all rises to
occasion! - No! This age is too close,
and it loosens easily - I am too free:
one who walks on the waves and pulls out
drowning men from swell and fall of its sea.
Written in Birmingham UK at the YMCA hostel while training
for the civil service (1969) – needless to add, it was not my vocation.
