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.