poliphilo

STRANGE DAYS

There are always parts of your own town

You've not seen before- ribbons of meadow

Between estates where dusty old horses

Whisk at their flies, unbuilt upon hillocks

With countrified names, a cemetery

With a more than lifesize trooper stood

On a marble plinth. At Leesfield church

I read the graves. I got one wrong

Because of the dirt that had filled up the lines.

"Thou art about my path" it said.

I read, "Thou art a loving bath"-

Which I rather like. By the south wall

Lay a man who was born with the Marseillaise,

Who'd seen the skies of his village bleared

By the cotton mills and died in the year

Of the Mutiny. The man's full name-

I wonder how he came by it

And how he graced it- was Strange Mayall

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