Spring Street

 They're sweeping up the leaves on Spring Street

Tidying away the trash

Painting it all in a varnish

White washing their laundry and cash

They're cleaning out the cupboards on Spring Street

Making room for a new family to move in

Leaving their reasons on the door step

Throwing their letters in the bin

The workmen are fixing the pipes

The arabs drink outside costa coffee

After one of them nearly got in a fight

With a man over who was wrong and who was right

"I was alone!" he kept shouting, passers by stop and watch

in the street

On the otherside of the road, they are all white

Oh they're sweeping up the leaves on Spring Street

The leaves keep falling on Spring Street

And my time is nearly done

The London road so busy under

A clouded sun

Red buses passing so gently,

Like ships in the night

Geezers and wheezers and two-time sneezers

Squeezing by left and right

And Spring Street is telling its story

Like a year that turns on without proof

That tomorrow all this will look different

That tomorrow we'll live a new truth

There are race wars down on Spring Street

White washing walls and blackening teeth

The French harangue Nelson's Column and greet

The Spaniards who fill Trafalgar square beneath

The Germans are daisy bombing all the banks

Shy dalmatian dogs are begging for homes giving thanks

To the carriages and scooters, and pizza delivery boys

Who are dropping them crusts as babies drop toys

And Spring street is looking lovely this time of year

As winter makes a mockery of flower sellers

And street singers recite sonnets of Juliet

And Romeo is on his balcony shaving his chest

And the circus is holding a strongman contest

Who is the most freakish, who's strength will win the day

Saint Crispin rides a steel mare upon the copper chains that lay

Around the step of the museum where sweet children play

And Spring Steet is looking quite clean this way

 

In the circus all kinds of animals are there

Elephants in castles in long suited trousers

And penguins who dance in pairs

I took a trip on the circle line

and found an anathema there

How could I be travelling straight

While I was going round and round?

It was all too much for me to believe

And then I saw Paddington bear

He had made a home for himself on the platform

And the stations of Charing cross were there

I counted old Kentish town and an opprobrium

As the farmers' step wives all lived there

The dogs were selling newspapers in the stands

And I bought one for a paw-pound

He said put the lines back in the prison

For that is where the sentence is found

A rabbit hopped on the rails of the barley

And swayed as the tannoy announced

The next train at platform three is

The two fifteen to Plymouth

And I stepped on the rights of the fare

Spring Street was smiling in the cold light

And Samantha had cut off her hair

Samson was her barber in the Turkish restaurant

Where fat men and young girls sat so fair

I tried to piece together the puzzle

Of its myriad strands and wefts

And I with cloven hoof and cleft palate

Let King Oedipus disappear

The ships will go down out of sight

As the horizon is gathering sunlight

And the broken eggshells of Spring Street

Show the first path where new lambs bleat 

First cuckoo of Spring

 No I'm the first cuckoo of Spring

Will the first cuckoo of Spring please stand up

Raise your  wing, or give a wink

Look it's me, I was the first

No shut up I got here yesterday

Yesterday! What are you talking about?

I came last Tuesday

 I was here two weeks ago

They had forecast sun

But it turned out snow

I called it first

Saw the first dandilion blow

Or was it a daffodil I remember?

No perhaps that was last November

You know I can't tell these days no more

Not with climate change knocking at the door

Song of Spring

 From the hedgerows the foxes bark

And the swans like diplodocuses 

glow in the dark

And the otters paw the banks of gold

Where golden sunlight falls in folds

Raising heads and spirits high

They sing:

To live, to live and not to die

And the Willows twist and stand

Like ancients' fists grown from the land

As Alder drink from watery cup

Their roots that think the wrong way up

And branches are like wizards' sleeves

Too dry, should die, but still believe

Then from their sleeve

Green hands' new growth shoot forth 

and speak their ancient oath

They cry:

To live, to live and not to die

The Narcissi trumpet loud

Spring is come in sky and cloud

As dandelions like lions bold

Turn their yellow faces to uphold

And all the flowers to winter wave goodbye

Singing:

To live, to live and not to die

 

And the Bittern booms his bottle top song

A bottle bank of woodwind birds sing along

And chaffinch dart, and crows they swarm

Come are spring months sunny and warm

Gone are winter months so long and bitter

As Egrets are blown like paper litter

They all sing out their oath and cry

to live, to live and not to die!

 

 

 

Sap is rising

The Sap is rising from the ground
Sticky sweet with life it sounds
Out the hollows of dry wood
Press-ganging life into its hood
And strangely swaying in old limbs
The things birds know on the wing
And trapping flies in its ointment
It elucidates life in an amber spyglass
Fifty million years ago
This same sap was on the flow
Pushing up from mother earth
Giving life, giving birth

One Easter Sunday Evening

The scents of jasmine vanish
In the halls where they speak Spanish
And the Banquets all are famished
Down the roads where taxis wait

With six pence in their pockets
And rolls of tenners
Photographs held in lockets
By prisoners and lovers

And Swindlers clean the carpets
Of Millionaires who ask for it
And antique dealers in markets
Hold up artworks to a glass

Four and twenty black birds
Follow out the ravens
Who speak nothing but death words
To the graveyard shift crews

And cockerels in the morning
Wear black for those in mourning
Heralding the dawning
Of a new day spent alone

In the tawny honey dew
Calligraphers they sew
New buttons onto old Bibles
Made of Stone

But I stand there waiting
To listen to lovers talking
From womb to tomb
They're fating
Every stepping stone

For the temples now in silence
Even the birds share no more violence
As the dream of Gerontius
The scurvy pebbles are thrown

And the potter at his wheel
As the pickers in the field
Unearth what was too real
For the inhabitants of Rome

I feel every ivy leaf
Fall like some coincidence
Of a half penny's incidence
As it spins like a silver moon

Unfortunates and cowards
Lock their loves in ivory towers
Wait for knights with white powers
To free them from black doom

Since Marshals ring up Burglars
To break into their particulars
And leave no trace of their vernaculars
As they speak upon their phone

I wish for heavenly bowers
In the sandpits of hell's dowers
Where the marriage of a Figaro
Is a wedding for God alone