Cicatrice

'Yet a new deluge, and of Lethe flood
hath drowned us all…'  John Donne

A century and a millennium hover
like the stars in Jurassic Park
over the griping squatters down on Grub Street
nibbling at the carcass of poetry.
There, among the faces in the crowd:
Old Possum and Saint Sebastian
crazy Jane and tired old Cuchulain,
Aunt Jenny’s tigers and the Beekeeper
with his finely chiselled Meinkampf face.

The sun though, still rises up behind them
and the soil is still bare, though blades of grass
threaten to undermine the chimney stacks
and, without cease resist the flow of joy
poured like cultures down dead-end streets.
We who never give up, cultivate
tend fresh young basil in our kitchens.
We pass, scratched but exceeding alive
through the thicket and the choking ivy

to the source of our song.