In all the major cities
Fewer fall in love forever
There are fewer leaves
To brush along bare arms
Less long grass to entangle
Lovers’ ankles where they walk –
And when they step into a city street
All they smell is urine
Fewer calming summer evening
Breezes rise to sensibly disturb
In sweetly heavy incense
Seeping suddenly from night-stock –
But cordite on the lungs
From tube-trains in brief kisses
Courtesies and country manners
Count for nothing in that clamour
City folk call ‘furthering careers’
The corner-stone they set aside
Follows them at nightfall
In apparition of the harvest moon
The lynchpin of the gate they closed
Retains their fingerprints on file
For nature has authority
To question and to caution
To place each single city
Under arrest
A MAP OF THE WORLD
The ancients believed the globe
Supported by Atlas
The Greeks rather fancied the globe
Supported by Athens
Indians perceived their plains and mountains
Turtle Island resting on a Turtle
Rome that reductive realist
Allowed its historians access –
Republic was supported by
Slavery from systematic conquest
But with free loaves and theatre every day
Gymnasiums baths and underfloor heating
Most citizens agreed not to ‘see’
Slavery as power’s ‘invincibility’
A little like today
Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer