Crystal Palace Park

I. The Head

In the middle of a lockdown, I am lost
in the living maze. The hornbeam hedge, unminded
now for months, remembering its lopped

limbs, grew headstrong, wildering, it blinded
its own eye, sewed shut the famous rings,
turning against the maker that designed it.

Turning again, each path re-roots to bring
me – though I hardly mind – to the same dead
end. I have forgotten everything

but these three things: the root of Penge; the head
-less sculpture loitering outside the maze;
and one more piece of what I’d always said

was useless trivia, which means three ways,
a forking road, the point where lost begins.
Lost in the mid-Eighties, it was Dante’s,
...