AT THE END OF THE PATH
This is the path the servants would have taken,
the cook, the scullery maid – and the tinker
who sharpened the knives, and the butcher’s lad –
by the side of the house, along this path
of Victorian blue diamond pavers
cast at a local brickworks, and brought
on a flat wagon pulled by a dray.
The works closed down in the Depression.
After the war the chimney was demolished.
Bitter sludge from an oil refinery
was secreted in the kilns – and grassed over.
***
I pause under the golden candelabra
of the laburnum. In its aureate light
I listen to the bees in the saffron folds
of the tree. Their humming, frantic drone
is electric, as if I were standing
beneath a pylon. The blossoms overhang
the black wrought-iron gate at the end of the path.
***
The day I began sketching this poem
was the day more than forty years ago
Bobby Sands died in the Maze. Some hung black flags
in our neighbourhood. A north east wind
is forecast that will wrench and scatter
the yellow petals like a broken necklace.