Strange Days

[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