N.W.5 & N.6

Red cliffs arise. And up them service lifts

Soar with the groceries to silver heights.

Lissenden Mansions. And my memory sifts

Lilies from lily-like electric lights

And Irish stew smells from the smell of prams

And roar of seas from roar of London trams.

Out of it all my memory carves the quiet

Of that dark privet hedge where pleasures breed,

There first, intent upon its leafy diet,

I watched the looping caterpillar feed

And saw it hanging in a gummy froth

Till, weeks on, from the chrysalis burst the moth.

I see black oak twigs outlined on the sky,

Red squirrels on the Burdett-Coutts estate.

I ask my nurse the question “Will I die?”

As bells from sad St. Anne’s ring out so late,

“And if I do die, will I go to Heaven?”

Highgate at eventide. Nineteen-eleven.

“You will. I won’t.” From that cheap nursery-maid,

Sadist and puritan as now I see,

I first learned what it was to be afraid,

Forcibly fed when sprawled across her knee

Lock’d into cupboards, left alone all day,

“World without end.” What fearsome words to pray.

“World without end.” It was not what she’ld do

That frightened me so much as did her fear

And guilt at endlessness. I caught them too,

Hating to think of sphere succeeding sphere

Into eternity and God’s dread will.

I caught her terror then. I have it still.