Sunday On Hampstead Heath Underfoot on the hill the water spurts Thickly out of the brilliant matted grasses Where the slopes fold in groins and thighs of earth And the winter sunlight in thin golden masses Falls through the lunging wind that swings the skirts Of the girls walking with their soldiers over the heath. A group of dwarf fir trees marks the crest With boughs like drowners hands that claw the sky. Far down the slope a white springboard rears Its gaunt and skeleton frame above the grey Tossed pool where in summer the divers raced But where now only the ducks bob, resting their oars. Leaning their weight on London, the smoky roofs Below the hill stretch out their infinite folds, A stony sea, far in miasmic depth Where men sleep out their empty dreams of deeds, And towers and domes, surging like green reefs, Rise up heroic and powerful in their sloth. Here on the hilltop my friends and I sit down. They talk of prison; the conversation falls And I say, One evening we must drink at the Spaniards I do not know what they are thinking as their heels Kick out the turf and their gaze creeps over the scene, Peering through the smoke for the customary landmarks. But, going away in my mind from their shut faces, Away from the quiet hilltop and the leisurely men Digging their new gardens below in the little valley, I enter the forest of rooftops and, under the grimy stone, Walk among the pipedreams of men in braces Reading in Sunday newspapers the end of faith and folly. And in the broken slums see the benign lay down Their empty, useless love, and the stunted creep, Ungainly and ugly, towards a world more great Than the moneyed hopes of masters can ever shape. In the dead, grey streets I hear the women complain And their voice is a spark to burn the myth of the state. And here where my friends talk and the green leaves spurt Quietly from waterlogged earth, and the dry twigs bud, I see a world will rise more lovely than Blake Knew in his winged dreams, and the leaves of good Will burst on branches dead from winters hurt, When the broken rise and the silent voices speak. George Woodcock.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:49:44 +0000
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