12 AUGUST 1995, Page 31

Coleridge on Hampstead Heath

In Valletta honey-coloured softstone churches powdered the air at noon While sun kissed flies and slept in ditches, Gilded the sea's back, struck gold samphires into light. Angelus bells hammered the cracked sky Startling a pair of dithering choughs to flight.

On Hampstead Heath today the world greens in its drizzle far from coral shipwrecks and the heat - All horror left behind me with the vision's dazzle.

Now nearby they chase the dragon's tail with needles (white powdersift in sachets) Thus avoiding metaphysics, or Revelations's riddles.

If I had grown with them would headlights have found me in a tenement stairwell, tightening The tourniquet while junkie faces mooned around me?

Alan Wall