Seven Poems

Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury fields are flat and dim.
They will build houses there, one school.
We come each Sunday, late, to swim

not in the river's brooding cool
(what is the Abbey looking at?)
but in a clean, blue-cloistered pool.

They fought upon the river flats.
There Henry prayed, devout and mad.
God, what are you looking at?

For Richard comes. There is no mouth
to say if he is animal,
a crooked butcher from the North,

or too is trapped by that raw day
would kiss the jewelled cross; would be King.
One shadow trembles in his way.
...