Summer Notes

I

Mother in front, with shopping bag

And umbrella; I in the middle;

Behind me a bespectacled

Grandfatherly hodman carrying

A light load of bricks. The air

Was clear as a bell that morning.

Back at my desk, night’s events—

Moon, jackfruit-tree, homing swallow—

Overtaking the window, hourglass sand

The hour, I fell asleep. Our days

Filled with insubstantial things,

We dream to make up for lost time.

II

Evening, a book in my hand,

Feet crossed on a plank of light

Slanting through the door,

In the northern sky a cloud

About the size of Ireland looks down.

One by one lines darken

On the unread page and early stars

Appear to take sides: going in,

A phrase singing in my head,

A light rain of rhythms surrounds me.

III

Empty lorries pass us and a bored

Holiday-maker waves from a bus.

Turning into a sidestreet we’re enclosed

In an ex-brigadier’s garden,

Where behind tall hedges and under

A parrotless sky dwarf mango trees

Carry on all fours full grown

Fruit. Walking back past inconspicuous

Grocers’ shops, our own lives

Seeming blessed with retirement, a new

Bustle in the evening air: the sight

Of common birds in exuberant flight.

IV

There’s a world so they may seek advantage.

Tumours, lyings-in, disorders of the skin,

Jobs and killings: the conversation

Of the unfailably married gathered round

A tea wagon. A deaf-mute, a servant’s daughter,

Hops on the grass where a mongrel

Yawns; parked cars inch forward

In receding light. “How did the shaddock tree die?”

I ask. A rockery where faded zinnias grow

Forces its trunk and crumbly leaves

Hang at long intervals from

Mortified branches; the ivy

That lashed it from base to crown sinking

Petioles into the bark, rises in victorious tiers

On an adjoining wall. “The last fruit

Was its sweetest,” someone says at the gate

As we leave our hosts, the hooded ivy, the poisoned

Quarry, the animal kingdom of plants.