Chalfont St. Giles

After the timeless cottage, brick-blurred street,

uneasy moisture of Cromwellian ghosts'

| tidy latinity (the marble verse),

perplexedly the churchyard snares the feet

where loutish graves sweat out conspicuous frosts.

Over the gull-grey patches Resurrection

teeters disconsolately-no dead will rise

frightfully mending brokenness, revise

flabby redundancy of motto and flower.

Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour!

How could we mouth our once integumental

outposts of love disported here, commending

full cornucopias or the rudimental

laungers that beauty formulates each spring?

The brave fare better in communiqués

who had such moments no remembering

offsets the fetish or the clown effect,

clumsily vocal where we least suspect.