A Prison for Sale
THE by-pass motorist turns his head,
And the hiking girl, with a hump on her back. A wondering eye.
Out in the fields an abbey of crime.
A ruin, where penance was long a cult— A prison for sale.
Like a damaged hive it dries in the sun, The galleried cells like broken combs Against the blue.
Like a monk at prayer, or a bee at work Filling each hexagon up, so here The prisoner lived ; The heart's obsessions, heather-sweet, From a rough life's small hardy flowers He too distilled ; In the multicellular eye of his mind Some constant image was multiplied, The honey of hope.
No doubt this ancient monument (Unsuitable for hotel or school Or anything else) Will soon be bought to be broken up- , And nobody will point or stare At the cloister-combs,
• Hiker and motorist hurrying on
• To similar crimes, and a diet of dreams In separate cells. WILLIAM PLOMEIL
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