“Will you decorate the font”, they
said, “for harvest?” -
the people piling apples, stacking
tins,
propping up the sheaf-shaped
wooden bread,
uneatable and tired, upon a
distant altar.
I’ll stack no tins around this
well of life, the source;
this is for the children.
They shall be here in spirit, if
not flesh,
to circle it in ring-a-roses,
to joy in youth, to shout in hope
still burning
in these bright and scattered
leaves.
Those who flame laughing with
desire
shall here be honoured in the
small red wellies,
asserting sturdily a gratitude for
gum;
they too would know this deep
delight
in fluffy friezes of the old man’s
beard,
the feathers and the blood of
blackberries;
their fingers would go out to
crab-apples,
to pointed beechnuts, cobs and
conkers,
glowing, wonderful, on greasy
strings
that fall haphazard over angry,
stone-bound angels.
I will set books around, opening a
world;
enchantment, knowledge,
looped around with skipping ropes,
with wooden trains;
I will send towers of battered
blocks
scaling up the spirits of
uncharity;
I will put clean water in a clean
cup,
a jar of honey, and a sliced white
loaf;
and so that no child will be
forgotten
I will put a dented tin, dead,
quite empty,
to roll upon a spread of sand...
(November,
1987)
