Michael Shepherd Poems

London, six o'clock in June, two-o-o-five:

These streets were built in nineteen-five or thereabouts
in unimaginative grid, on London clay and previous watercress beds
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‘So tell me, Michael…’
the voice is slow and measured,
that of one used to public speaking,
his words so significant that the audience
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Too young to know the horrors of a war I've fought,
too young to know war's fear, or yearn for heroism,
but old enough to have lived through;
boys but one year older than myself
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where the unlimited meets the limited,
and the unimagined meets the imagined;
where the unseen meets the seen,
and the eye meets the heart;
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Had you known
that an old man was watching
would you have been
more grateful
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The poet, bent over the paper, ink-brush in hand,
carefully defining poetry for his pupils
did not see the first stork of the Spring
in the limitless blue sky,
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In the community of this website
like a girdle round the earth
(did you read that, Will?) ,
sharing the inner lives,
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Words are like unicorns –
come from nowhere
without any one’s permission or request
because there’s a need for them.
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