Hymn to Hillsborough Gardens
Carter Vance
The rolling out of green passageway
hills must have reminded pale men
with leg chains in ship hulls of
the misty home counties;
why else would they
have graced these rocks with
names of kings, with Sunday’s
best, with three-prong electric
plugs?
As old as the flying places
were, top houses dotting the
bright, rococo Spanish shades,
the fixtures in sheet metal were new.
The telling ocean shade of
Samaritan tarps below pointed
to who was enough without
two silver coins to cross,
enough without a Labour Party
badge number, or enough without
fortunes in family names
to Brooklyn, or Rexdale,
or inner-ring London, that could
have lent a hand.
In rusting white time I watch,
hear the spray of ocean and
chop of housing lumber, again
like the timely overseer,
the court magistrate.
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