Creeper

Shaving this morning, I look out of the window

In expectation: will another small

Tendril of ivy, dry and straw-yellow,

Have put its thin clasp on the garden wall?

Oh dear no. A few arid strands, a few

Curled-up leaves, are all that’s left of it.

The children pulled it up for something to do.

My mouth sets in its usual post-box slit.

Fled is that vision of a bottle-green

Fur-coat of foliage muffling the pale brick,

Stamping into the flat suburban scene

A proof of beauty, lovable exotic.

Of course, I know ivy will sweetly plump

Itself all over, shyly barge into crannies,

Pull down lump after elegiac lump,

Then tastefully screen ruin from our eyes.

Then it would all become a legal quibble:

Whose what has wrecked what how and by whose what;

And moral: is turning stout wall to rubble

A fool’s trick in fact, but not in thought?

We should be thankful to be spared all that

When bank-clerk longings get a short answer,

When someone snatches off our silly hat

And drop-kicks it under a steamroller.