Margate, 1940

From out the Queen’s Highcliffe for weeks at a stretch

I watched how the mower evaded the vetch,

So that over the putting-course rashes were seen

Of pink and of yellow among the burnt green.

How restful to putt, when the strains of a band

Announced a thé dansant was on at the Grand,

While over the privet, comminglingly clear,

I heard lesser “Co-Optimists” down by the pier.

How lightly municipal, meltingly tarr’d,

Were the walks through the Laws by the Queen’s Promenade

As soft over Cliftonville languished the light

Down Harold Road, Norfolk Road, into the night.

Oh! then what a pleasure to see the ground floor

With tables for two laid as tables for four,

And bottles of sauce and Kia-Ora1 and squash

Awaiting their owners who’d gone up to wash—

Who had gone up to wash the ozone from their skins

The sand from their legs and the Rock from their chins,

To prepare for an evening of dancing and cards

And forget the sea-breeze on the dry promenades.

From third floor and fourth floor the children looked down

Upon ribbons of light in the salt-scented town;

And drowning the trams roared the sound of the sea

As it washed in the shingle the scraps of their tea.

*   *   *   *   *

Beside the Queen’s Highcliffe now rank grows the vetch,

Now dark is the terrace, a storm-battered stretch;

And I think, as the fairy-lit sights I recall,

It is those we are fighting for, foremost of all.