Coming up England by a different line
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
‘Why, Coventry!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was born here.’
I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
That this was still the town that had been ‘mine’
So long, but found I wasn’t even clear
Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates
Were standing, had we annually departed
For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went:
Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots.
‘Was that,’ my friend smiled, ‘where you “have your roots”?’
No, only where my childhood was unspent,
I wanted to retort, just where I started:
By now I’ve got the whole place clearly charted.
Our garden, first: where I did not invent
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn’t spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
‘Really myself’. I’ll show you, come to that,
The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it; where she
Lay back, and ‘all became a burning mist’.
And, in those offices, my doggerel
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,
Who didn’t call and tell my father There
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead –
‘You look as though you wished the place in Hell,’
My friend said, ‘judging from your face.’ ‘Oh well,
I suppose it’s not the place’s fault,’ I said.
‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’
End of the poem
15 random poems
- To Mæcenas by Phillis Wheatley
- Inscription For The Tomb Of Mr. Hamilton by William Cowper
- brownie.html
- God’s Grandeur poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Столп
- Огюст Барбье – Зеленая Дева
- Heavy Woman by Sylvia Plath
- How Sweet I Roam’d by William Blake
- In Thoughtless Mind by Satish Verma
- Николай Некрасов – Вчера, сегодня
- The Lilac by William Barnes
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Казалось
- A Rustic Seat Near The Sea by William Lisle Bowles
- Robert Burns: Lines On The Fall Of Fyers Near Loch-Ness.: Written with a Pencil on the Spot.
- In the Mile End Road poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.