From Lowlife to Highgate

The brown hill of boredom
stretches into the unknown evening,
and the rain beats the paths
towards its slippery, dull calvary.
Up on the blasted Heath
the rich keep fit for Armageddon,
while darkness falls over London
and wetness on the world.

Again in April I append,
“A year is gone and gain is none”.
Alight with hope I’m often found:
but Jack O’Lantern’s skills abound.
The night’s a hearth,
the Moon it’s fire, and we,
poor feral creatures,
merely kindling.

It’s an English sensibility, summoned by rain,
that takes me up the hill to look out on London,
with all it’s ancient imprecations laid out before me,
To harrow and wield stone, to Gravesend.

Which Dictionary of English Place Names makes me see,
what castles and cathedrals cannot hide:
the ghost is a Lord until we lay it.