The Silent Sunday
FROM the bandstand in the garden on the hill . • Where workless seamen moped on benches And shrieking children worked the swings The ruins of the dockyard can be seen.
Half-way down the hill a murder ease Once drew idle crowds to stare Over the mottled laurels in the garden of an inn, And a newspaper stood up on end And moved unsteadily, urged by the wind, Like a child that learns to walk.
That busy world of cars and bungalows, Who would have thought that it would stop so soon ?
Fissures appeared in cricket fields And houses in .the night collapsed.
The Thames flowed backward to, its source, The last trickle seen to disappear Swiftly, like an adder to its hole, And here and there along the river-bed The stranded fish gaped among empty tins ; Face downward lay the huddled suicides Like litter that a riot leaves. _ They say some women lived for Weeks . Hidden in bushes on the common, then drew lots And ate.each other. Now .
A sunny mist hangs over everything. An almond tree suggests that this is spring But on the right an oak retains its leaves.
Where. are the sea-birds ? Why no gulls ?
All drowned.when the oil-tanks burst ?
Water chuckles, from a broken pipe. .
WILLIAM PLOVER.
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