THE DESERTED WAGON
It was county council green, wooden, with
metal-rimmed wheels and a curved roof
like a Roma caravan, and a triangular limber
for towing by clanking, ponderous steamrollers –
before petrol driven lorries took the road menders
to and fro in what, for a time, would have seemed
like no time at all. This one – abandoned pre-war –
was parked, throughout my childhood, on the verge
at a country cross roads.
It entered my dreams. I thought God worked there,
hunched in his robes above an operating table,
serious in his beard, bringing forth babies.
Whenever I approach that cross roads,
I remember the dream and being a child
and the image of God, though God
and childhood have long been abandoned.
John Huddart
November 3, 2014Hardy could have passed this way! He too would have relished leaving that delightful conundrum at the end – of both childhood and God having been abandoned when the poem indicates quite clearly that both of them remain intrinsically interesting.