Her tiny head
peers above three jars
crammed with votive jonquils –
her face among the crows, the marching limes,
the warty humps and bubbles
of the London planes.
Bronze and bluebell.
Bronze on high Portland stone.
Her beauty wrenched from clay,
whose sculptor
stabbed unfinished voids
to stare directly at the surging wave,
eyes that studied fin and rainbow
forced, like millions at this hour,
to rest on unembellished walls,
eyes clouded by a mother’s death –
a rush of fever – locked inside
and left to storm at nothingness,
eyes that combed the glass theatricals
of Oxford Street, sought life
in tint and shape,
buses, roses, lipsticks, hats,
umbrellas, parcels,
Lyons teashops, tortoises,
summoned ghosts from purple ink,
survived the blitzkrieg on this silent square,
scoured brisk silver ranks of cigarettes.
