There are always parts of your own town
You've not seen before- ribbons of meadow
Between estates where dusty old horses
Whisk at their flies, unbuilt upon hillocks
With countrified names, a cemetery
With a more than lifesize trooper stood
On a marble plinth. At Leesfield church
I read the graves. I got one wrong
Because of the dirt that had filled up the lines.
"Thou art about my path" it said.
I read, "Thou art a loving bath"-
Which I rather like. By the south wall
Lay a man who was born with the Marseillaise,
Who'd seen the skies of his village bleared
By the cotton mills and died in the year
Of the Mutiny. The man's full name-
I wonder how he came by it
