Sunday 29 December 2019

Juvenilia . . . A Teenage Notebook . . .


A grief ago*

A grief ago
the fire burned itself out
where this small dog now
dares to paw the ashes.
I shall not shout
at one too meagre
to tempt my
 injustices.




In the Manner of Walter Savage Landor.

  O prosper not the past
that we may eat upon
a harvest lost, laid waste
    by our own carrion.**



*A coherent line from a word-salad-poem by Dylan Thomas.

** A reference to overpopulated London and the Thames, polluted since the early 19th Century.
The prince destined to be King Henry IX died, aged 18, from typhoid fever from a swim in the Thames
near Richmond in October 1612.