WHEN melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley And electric trains are lighted after tea The poplars near the Stadium are trembly With their tap and tap and whispering to me, Like the sound of little breakers Spreading out along the surf-line When the estuary’s filling With the sea.
Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island And Harrow churchyard full of sailors’ graves And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing Is the level to the Wealdstone turned to waves And the rumble of the railway Is the thunder of the rollers As they gather up for plunging Into caves.
There’s a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton, There’s a line of harbour lights at Perivale, Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire The little fleet of trawlers under sail? Can those boats be only roof tops As they stream along the skyline In a race for port and Padstow With the gale?
Middlesex
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train, With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s Daintily alights Elaine; Hurries down the concrete station With a frown of concentration, Out into the outskirt’s edges Where a few surviving hedges Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.
Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly, Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green Hiding hair which, Friday nightly, Delicately drowns in Drene; Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer, Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa, Gains the garden – father’s hobby – Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby, Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.
Gentle Brent, I used to know you Wandering Wembley-wards at will, Now what change your waters show you In the meadowlands you fill! Recollect the elm-trees misty And the footpaths climbing twisty Under cedar-shaded palings, Low laburnum-leaned-on railings Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.
Parish of enormous hayfields Perivale stood all alone, And from Greenford scent of mayfields Most enticingly was blown Over market gardens tidy, Taverns for the bona fide, Cockney singers, cockney shooters, Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters, Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.
Baker St Station Buffet
Early Electric! With what radiant hope Men formed this many-branched electrolier, Twisted the flex around the iron rope And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear, And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill’d Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.
Early Electric! Sit you down and see, ‘Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner, A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea, And sepia views of leafy lanes in Pinner – Then visualize, far down the shining lines, Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines.
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road, They saw the last green fields and misty sky, At Neasden watched a workmen’s train unload, And, with the morning villas sliding by, They felt so sure on their electric trip That Youth and Progress were in partnership.
And all that day in murky London Wall The thought of Ruislip kept him warm inside; At Farringdon that lunch hour at a stall He bought a dozen plants of London Pride; While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift, Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.
Early Electric! Maybe even here They met that evening at six-fifteen Beneath the hearts of this electrolier And caught the first non-stop to Willesden Green, Then out and on, through rural Rayner’s Lane To autumn-scented Middlesex again.
Cancer has killed him. Heart is killing her. The trees are down. An Odeon flashes fire Where stood their villa by the murmuring fir When ” they would for their children’s good conspire. ” Of their loves and hopes on hurrying feet Thou art the worn memorial, Baker Street.
