I think my earliest memory,
pulling the tablecloth and tea-
pot almost down on top of me,
a sudden swirling in my eyes,
a scattering of residues,
enough to make that moment freeze
the summer in our garden, must
have been when consciousness at last
permitted time to be released.
Perhaps those dregs then helped to feed
a bloom still holding up its head
today in some neglected bed,
and broken coronation cups
might well be brightening the slabs
in someone’s postwar path. Perhaps.
But though I have endured it weak
as water, stewed in sugar, dark
like bitter ink, and will even take
what’s sealed within a pyramid,
it draws me still, that fountainhead,
that ceremonious patch of shade
where life stands brewing patiently
and those around it can’t yet see
the imminent catastrophe.
