Just like an endless holiday, he said.
‘I’ve never known a Spring like this!’
A block away
She kissed the child goodnight
Said grandpa’s gone away
Began to softly sing.
When morning came her eyes
Would open once again
Though others, shut, would not.
Life hasn’t changed that much, I thought,
For those with lawns, gazebos, plots,
Where heedless birds announce the day
To me and to the hapless, equally,
Unheard by souls for whom they sing,
Those kept in poverty, minorities,
In every form of slavery, they know
How immigration saves a nation
Who repays in Windrush indignation,
Closed in margins, cracks of cities,
In the shanty towns and slums
Who’ll ever know the cost, the toll?
Dice loaded thrown, seeds sown,
People polarised, expert statistics roll,
Indifferent indices of suffering flow,
To no avail fail desperate pleas, entreaties.
On such a troubled sea
Sails just another Spring.
So full of beautiful uncertainties
This world becomes.
Refer to: May 2020 – One night in May
It was great to be able to see your poem after hearing you read it at the May Zoom. A well-integrated combination of observation and polemic, with the anger made all the more forceful by technical and emotional control.