My Place

Why scorn my city?

Well then, whip me, but stop that deigning;

Your speech was framed for fitter errantry

Your heart to sooner break such tenantry

To tropes and troubles and to angled squares.


Don’t blame my birthplace if you shift like that;

I shouldn’t blame at all. Raise up that brow

Now – if you choose, know that that edge

That tires on plate will best dissever silk

And bear in mind your best rational ilk

Your kind that rallies in each jibe I’ve eyed.


Enough, to me be silent,

And yet my city, ground, is duller than

A grind, but when enjoyed, don’t you

Remember how you shine or shone in it?

Brightly but not the first, nor most deserving.

The mind and hand here bowed itself unswerving.


Here scholars dropped their tracts for many a cause

Ill-fortuned and unfunded and believed.

Can’t you see Empress Matilda, arm in arm

With shortie Charles? It doesn’t snow too often

Because this city’s memory’s in slush,

Shall we then hear one sleetflake’s anecdote?


Sixty odd years back a boy was due

To pick up one of Jowett’s awards. In Poland

Look at that palamino’s unmetalproof flank.

So Grandpa never went the way I followed,

Stayed at the great subcontinental jewel,

Married his artist cousin, and kept up his Greek.


The chosen ghosts, the great who stayed behind -

No wonder it feels odd, our yellow town,

Demands its homage, and revenges hurt.

Concede it that, and drink at least its health.

When it can’t yield, then I want to throw

A trenchcoat over melting gutter snow.